Carlo SCARPA - Castelvecchio Museum

Between 1958 and 1974, Castelvecchio, underwent an important renovation and reinstallation of the museum spaces, designed and supervised for the city of Verona by the architect Carlo Scarpa ( Venice 1906 - Sensai, Japan 1978) during the directinship of the art historian Licisco Magagnato. The antique arms court, reduced at the beginning of the twentieth century to an Italianate garden, was trasformed by Scarpa into an extraordinary modern courtyard that evokes both Venice and tradition of gardens, and at the same time complements the architecture with geometrical logic and the use of both traditional Veronese materials, such as Prun stone, and contemporary ones, such as concrete. This space is both the prologue to the museum visit and a resting point along the route. Several important works in stone are also sited within the garden: two 19th-century fountains, an early 13th-century sarcophagus, the central rose from the mediaval floor of the church of Sant'Anastasia, installed here like an emblem next to the entrance. In addition, the site contains a medieval sundial and the celebrated equestrian statue of Cangrande I della Scala.