Castelvecchio Museum

The Castelvecchio Museum is one of the most important museums in Verona, in northern Italy, and a landmark of the Italian museum scene. It was founded in 1924, and between 1958 and 1974 Carlo Scarpa renovated it to modern standards, making it one of the most complete and well-preserved collections in the country.

The museum occupies the Castelvecchio fortress on the banks of the River Adige, beside one of the approaches to the Scaligero Bridge. Construction began in 1354 under Cangrande II, to a design usually credited to Francesco Belvilacqua, with the aim of defending the city. Over the centuries it served as a residence, a prison and a barracks, and today it houses the Civic Museum across some thirty rooms that mix sculpture, weapons, ceramics, jewellery, miniatures and medieval bells.

The painting collection spans Italian and foreign works from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries onward. Among its best-known pictures are Pisanello's Virgin of the Quail and the Virgin of the Rose Garden, which the website attributes to Michelino da Besozzo while other sources mention Stefano da Verona. Room XI also holds paintings by Jacopo Bellini. The fifteenth-century Venetian works in Rooms XIV and XV include two Madonnas by Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio's Saints Catherine and Veneranda. Another room displays two works by Mantegna and one by Crivelli.

The website also lists many paintings by Giovanni Francesco Caroto, Paolo Farinati, Francesco Morone and Cavazzola, reflecting the weight of the Veronese school in its holdings.