Palazzo della Gran Guardia

Palazzo della Gran Guardia stands on Piazza Bra, Verona's largest square, with the Arena di Verona a short walk away. Thirteen rusticated piers carry a loggia of arches, eighty-six metres long. Fifteen windows fill the main floor between paired columns, the central five arched and larger than the rest. An attic of rectangular windows lights the double-height hall behind them. The design balances the long facade against its ancient neighbour.

The idea dates to 1609, when Verona's captain, Giovanni Mocenigo, asked Venice's Doge for a hall to shelter troops in bad weather. Consent came before the year ended, and the first funds arrived early in 1610. Money ran out in 1614, and building stopped for nearly two hundred years. A plea of 1639 to keep ten thousand ducats of taxes for the works went nowhere. The city took over the building in 1808, on condition it be finished within three years and house the administration. Engineer Giuseppe Barbieri led the revival, though the works only restarted in June 1819, under Austrian rule. That campaign reinforced the facade and added the monumental staircase. Austrian troops occupied the nearly finished palace during the First Italian War of Independence, and the last payments came in May 1853. Early guesses credited the design to Michele Sanmicheli, who had died long before building began. It belongs instead to Domenico Curtoni, who absorbed Sanmicheli's language through his cousin Bernardino Brugnoli.

Exhibitions, conferences and public events fill the palace where troops once waited out bad weather. Cafés, restaurants and shops crowd the streets around it, and the Teatro Filarmonico stands close by. Look closely at the piers of that loggia: many of their stones came from the Arena itself.