Description
Palazzo Maffei is the Baroque palace that closes off the northwest side of Piazza delle Erbe, in the heart of Verona. Since 2020 its main floor has been open to the public as a house museum, with over 350 works of art, ancient ones and above all from the twentieth century.
The first thing you notice is on the roof: a balustrade with six statues of gods, from the left Hercules, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Apollo and Minerva. Five are in local stone. Hercules is much lighter, and he is believed to come from the Roman Capitolium.
The facade is an elegant backdrop for the square: a portico with five arches, and on the main floor large windows with little balconies, pediments and Ionic half-columns decorated with masks, above an attic with lower openings.
Inside, the Casa Museo takes up about twenty rooms. You begin in the frescoed rooms on the square, where ancient art converses with modern art as in a private home, and continue into a proper gallery. There are paintings, sculptures, drawings and decorative art objects from the collection of Luigi Carlon.
Among the twentieth-century artists you will meet Boccioni, Balla, Severini, Picasso, de Chirico, Morandi, Magritte, Duchamp, Fontana, Burri and Manzoni.
The other thing not to miss is the helical staircase, daring, made of stone, with an elliptical plan. It climbs from the cellar to the top with no central support at all, and ends with a lantern and statues.
The palace stands where in Roman times the Capitolium rose, the great temple at the crossing of the city's two main streets, on the edge of the Forum. After the fall of the empire it fell into ruin, and in its place came the stalls of the money changers, a trade the Maffei family also practiced.
In the 1600s the Maffei rebuilt their property. The plague of 1630 interrupted the work; then they found the palace too low compared with the neighboring houses and added a floor, finished in 1668.
On the roof there was even a garden with water features and six statues on the balustrade. It did not last long: by 1732 it had already been dismantled, and the flat roof gave way to a pitched one.
The first thing you notice is on the roof: a balustrade with six statues of gods, from the left Hercules, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Apollo and Minerva. Five are in local stone. Hercules is much lighter, and he is believed to come from the Roman Capitolium.
The facade is an elegant backdrop for the square: a portico with five arches, and on the main floor large windows with little balconies, pediments and Ionic half-columns decorated with masks, above an attic with lower openings.
Inside, the Casa Museo takes up about twenty rooms. You begin in the frescoed rooms on the square, where ancient art converses with modern art as in a private home, and continue into a proper gallery. There are paintings, sculptures, drawings and decorative art objects from the collection of Luigi Carlon.
Among the twentieth-century artists you will meet Boccioni, Balla, Severini, Picasso, de Chirico, Morandi, Magritte, Duchamp, Fontana, Burri and Manzoni.
The other thing not to miss is the helical staircase, daring, made of stone, with an elliptical plan. It climbs from the cellar to the top with no central support at all, and ends with a lantern and statues.
The palace stands where in Roman times the Capitolium rose, the great temple at the crossing of the city's two main streets, on the edge of the Forum. After the fall of the empire it fell into ruin, and in its place came the stalls of the money changers, a trade the Maffei family also practiced.
In the 1600s the Maffei rebuilt their property. The plague of 1630 interrupted the work; then they found the palace too low compared with the neighboring houses and added a floor, finished in 1668.
On the roof there was even a garden with water features and six statues on the balustrade. It did not last long: by 1732 it had already been dismantled, and the flat roof gave way to a pitched one.