Description
The Church of San Fermo Maggiore is really two churches, one on top of the other, in Verona's historic center, dedicated to the martyrs Fermo and Rustico. Below is the dim Romanesque church of the Benedictines; above, the large, bright church of the Franciscans, with a wooden ceiling shaped like an upturned ship.
The highlight is that very ship's-keel ceiling: a wooden false ceiling like an overturned hull, decorated with two galleries of saints made up of 416 painted panels from the 1300s. The bombing of February 2, 1945 set the church on fire, but the ceiling suffered only slight damage.
Just as worth seeing is the Brenzoni Mausoleum, from 1426, by the Florentine sculptor Nanni di Bartolo: it depicts the Resurrection. The sides of the canopy are frescoed by Pisanello with the Annunciation, the Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel.
In the Alighieri Chapel, on the right, rest Dante's last direct descendants. Here the young Paolo Veronese painted an altarpiece for the chapel's first owners, now kept at Castelvecchio. Also look for the remains of frescoes of worshipping angels by Stefano da Verona and the white and red marble pulpit from 1396.
The lower church is an intimate space: three aisles with groin vaults, light coming in through small slits, and a wooden crucifix from the 1500s in the central apse. On the walls, votive frescoes from between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries have survived.
Outside, the facade shows two eras: Romanesque stone below, Gothic brick above. The portal has a bronze door by Luciano Minguzzi with 24 panels on the stories of the two saints. Around the portal are tombs of illustrious figures, and behind the church the polygonal apses.
The Franciscans' story here is a long struggle. From 1232 they asked the Benedictines for the convent: it took two popes and a bishop, who at that moment was a prisoner in Venice. The monks gave in only in 1260.
The new owners rebuilt the upper church. On the triumphal arch they had painted the two men who had helped them, Guglielmo da Castelbarco, a friend of Cangrande I della Scala, and the prior, Fra Daniele Gusmerio.
Then the great Veronese families competed to be buried here, the Alighieri included. In 2018 a tomb was found in the cloister, probably that of the Templar grand master Arnoldo di Torroja, who died in Verona in 1184.
The highlight is that very ship's-keel ceiling: a wooden false ceiling like an overturned hull, decorated with two galleries of saints made up of 416 painted panels from the 1300s. The bombing of February 2, 1945 set the church on fire, but the ceiling suffered only slight damage.
Just as worth seeing is the Brenzoni Mausoleum, from 1426, by the Florentine sculptor Nanni di Bartolo: it depicts the Resurrection. The sides of the canopy are frescoed by Pisanello with the Annunciation, the Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel.
In the Alighieri Chapel, on the right, rest Dante's last direct descendants. Here the young Paolo Veronese painted an altarpiece for the chapel's first owners, now kept at Castelvecchio. Also look for the remains of frescoes of worshipping angels by Stefano da Verona and the white and red marble pulpit from 1396.
The lower church is an intimate space: three aisles with groin vaults, light coming in through small slits, and a wooden crucifix from the 1500s in the central apse. On the walls, votive frescoes from between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries have survived.
Outside, the facade shows two eras: Romanesque stone below, Gothic brick above. The portal has a bronze door by Luciano Minguzzi with 24 panels on the stories of the two saints. Around the portal are tombs of illustrious figures, and behind the church the polygonal apses.
The Franciscans' story here is a long struggle. From 1232 they asked the Benedictines for the convent: it took two popes and a bishop, who at that moment was a prisoner in Venice. The monks gave in only in 1260.
The new owners rebuilt the upper church. On the triumphal arch they had painted the two men who had helped them, Guglielmo da Castelbarco, a friend of Cangrande I della Scala, and the prior, Fra Daniele Gusmerio.
Then the great Veronese families competed to be buried here, the Alighieri included. In 2018 a tomb was found in the cloister, probably that of the Templar grand master Arnoldo di Torroja, who died in Verona in 1184.