Castelvecchio Museum

Cangrande I on Carlo Scarpa’s plinth at the Castelvecchio Museum

The figure at the centre of the Castelvecchio Museum is Cangrande I della Scala on his horse, the “magnificent lord” of Verona who took the poet Dante in at his court. You reach him as you leave the painting gallery. His statue stood on his tomb at Santa Maria Antica until 1909, and the one at the Scaliger Tombs today is a copy. In summer, a Castelvecchio ticket used the same day also gets you into the tombs.

The architect Carlo Scarpa, who reworked the museum in stages between 1958 and 1975, set the statue on a concrete support seven metres high, the height at which it once stood above the church. Walkways, stairs and a platform take you up close to horse and rider, and underneath lies the Porta del Morbio, a gate found during the building work of the 1960s.

Castelvecchio Museum on the VeronaCard

Castelvecchio is one of the VeronaCard’s included entries, so with the card you show its QR code at the door and go in. The city’s pages don’t say whether the card also opens the Titian exhibition, which is part of the museum ticket.

Castelvecchio Museum tickets: the Titian price until 31 January

Until 31 January 2027 the Castelvecchio ticket costs €12, up from €9, because it includes La Venere di Tiziano e il Rinascimento musicale, an exhibition built around Titian’s Venus, on loan from the Prado in Madrid. You buy it at the ticket office at the entrance or online at verona.coopculture.it, on the day if you like.

The museum turned 100 in 2026, and the ticket covers the centenary programme too. A route through its first century runs until 10 January 2027, and Capolavori lignei, a show of wooden sculpture from the dawn of the Renaissance, until 25 April 2027. There are also views of Verona by the 18th-century view painter Bernardo Bellotto and new lighting in the Sala Mantegna.

Inside the Castelvecchio Museum: Pisanello, Mantegna and Veronese

The museum runs through 29 rooms with 622 works, from the Middle Ages to the 18th century: paintings, sculpture, archaeology and arms. Its own list of twenty masterpieces begins with the Boi polyptych, attributed to the 14th-century painter Altichiero, and includes the sword of Cangrande I and a gold buckle shaped like a star.

In the paintings, look for Pisanello’s Madonna of the Quail, from about 1420, and a Holy Family with a female saint by Andrea Mantegna, the Renaissance master of Padua and Mantua. Paolo Veronese, the Verona-born painter of 16th-century Venice, is here twice, with the Bevilacqua Lazise altarpiece of 1548 and a Deposition of 1548-49. The list goes on through the Venetian painters Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini, Crivelli and Tintoretto to Tiepolo, and a portrait of a woman that the Flemish painter Rubens painted in 1602.

The Scaliger castle on the Adige, from Cangrande II to 1926

Cangrande II della Scala built the castle in 1354-56 to hold the Adige where the river enters Verona from the north, after his half-brother Fregnano had plotted against him. It went up over an early medieval church, San Martino in Aquaro, and its remains are still there in the parade ground.

From the courtyard you see the walls with their seven towers, the 42-metre keep of around 1376 and the Reggia, the lords’ palace. The castle’s bridge crosses the Adige on three arches, the widest spanning 48 metres; German troops blew it up in 1945, and it was rebuilt in 1949-51.

Under Venice, from 1409 to 1797, the castle was a barracks and a powder store, and the French under Napoleon and then the Austrians took down towers and battlements. The city took it over from the state in 1923, the architect Ferdinando Forlati gave it back its medieval look in 1924-26, and the museum opened on 25 April 1926.

Castelvecchio opening hours, free guided visits and concerts

Guided visits of the collections run on Saturday 14 November at 15:00, Saturday 28 November at 11:00 and Saturday 12 December at 15:00. They cost nothing beyond the ticket, and you reserve a place on 045 8036353.

The Titian exhibition has concerts in the Sala Boggian, the room where the painting hangs, at 17:00 on 21 November and on 5 and 19 December, and one more on 9 January. Each follows a free guided visit that has to be booked in advance; the city’s page doesn’t say how to book the visit or whether the concert costs extra.

Visiting Castelvecchio: the lift, audio guides and the address

The lift only goes as far as the painting gallery, with its 16th- to 18th-century pictures, and the museum doesn’t say whether Cangrande’s platform can be reached without steps. There’s a wheelchair to borrow at the ticket office and a route for blind visitors. Audio guides cost €4, the cloakroom and the Wi-Fi are free, and small dogs can come in a carrier.

Castelvecchio is at Corso Castelvecchio 2, on the bank of the Adige, with the castle’s own bridge beside it.