Verona Cathedral

Is Verona Cathedral free? One ticket for the whole complex

Going into Verona Cathedral to pray costs nothing, but a visit takes a €4 ticket, and that one ticket opens every part of the complex.

You buy it at the church when you arrive, with no booking. Children under 11 don’t pay, and neither do up to three under-18s for every two adults who do. For €1 more there’s an audio guide in seven languages, which you can hire until half an hour before closing. The complex is on Piazza Duomo, in the historic centre, within walking distance of Piazza delle Erbe.

Inside Verona Cathedral: Titian’s Assumption, the porch and the choir screen

Start with Titian’s Assumption, in the Cartolari-Nichesola chapel, set in an altar framed by the architect Jacopo Sansovino around 1532.

The cathedral is dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta and is also known as Santa Maria Matricolare. The two-storey porch on the front, from around 1139, is attributed to Nicolò, the sculptor who also worked at San Zeno and in Ferrara, and an inscription on it names him.

Inside, the nave is Gothic and the presbytery around the high altar is Renaissance, with a choir screen finished in 1550 by the architect Michele Sanmicheli and apse frescoes that Francesco Torbido painted from designs by Giulio Romano. Look out too for the Gothic monument of St Agatha.

Sant’Elena, the baptistery and the mosaics of the first basilicas

Long before the cathedral, two early Christian basilicas stood here, one from the first half of the 4th century and one from the second half of the 5th; the foundation that runs the complex says the first was consecrated by Zeno, Verona’s bishop. Their mosaic floors survive under the church of Sant’Elena and in the canons’ cloister.

The earthquake of 1117 destroyed the early Christian churches, and it took at least 20 years to repair the damage. Bishop Bernardo rebuilt the baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte in 1123, and a portico joins it to the cathedral; Sant’Elena, which began in the 9th century as a church of St George and St Zeno, was rebuilt in 1140.

Verona Cathedral on the VeronaCard

The VeronaCard includes the whole complex, along with the other three churches of the Fondazione Chiese Vive, which runs it: San Zeno, Sant’Anastasia and San Fermo. The card also takes something off the ticket at the Biblioteca Capitolare, the cathedral’s library.

When Verona Cathedral opens to visitors this winter

On Sundays the morning Masses, the last of them at 12:30, are why the doors only open to visitors at 13:30, and on any day visits pause if a service is on.

The cathedral can be visited in a wheelchair, and entry is free for disabled visitors and the person with them.

The Biblioteca Capitolare, on a ticket of its own

The cathedral’s library, the Biblioteca Capitolare, claims to be the oldest library in the world in continuous use, on a founding date of 517 that comes from a scribe’s signature. It isn’t on the cathedral ticket: a visit costs €6 if you buy it at the ticket offices of the churches.