Arche Scaligere

In a small enclosure beside the church of Santa Maria Antica, a minute from Piazza dei Signori, stand the tombs of the della Scala family, who ruled Verona through the fourteenth century.

They are among the finest Gothic funerary monuments in Italy: stone canopies on columns, each holding a sarcophagus, each topped by the dead lord on horseback in full armour.

The whole group is fenced by a wrought-iron railing carrying the family's emblem, a ladder -- scala -- repeated over and over. It is a coat of arms used as architecture, and it works.

The enclosure is shut for the winter — it closed on 2 November 2026. That is the whole trap, and it costs nothing to avoid once you know it: the tombs are in a small walled yard that the comune opens seasonally, and outside the season you read them from the street through the wrought-iron railing. Which, as it happens, is where the best of them is anyway.

There is also no ticket to buy. When the enclosure is open, entry is free but reserved — you need a ticket already used that same day at another of Verona's civic museums, or a VeronaCard, a Veneto MyCARD or a My IMUV Card. Cash at the gate is not one of the options.

Nothing, from the street. The railing, the tombs behind it and Cangrande I on the highest of them are public and permanent, at any hour.

Inside the enclosure is free but conditional, and only in season. It is reserved to holders of a ticket already used that day at another civic museum or monument, to VeronaCard and Veneto MyCARD holders, to My IMUV Card holders, and to the other categories entitled to free entry. There is no standalone ticket for the Arche at any price.

The tombs are visible from the street for free through the iron railing, which is how most people see them and is genuinely adequate -- the enclosure is small and the monuments are tall.

Access inside the enclosure is possible on a ticket, often combined with the Torre dei Lamberti, but opening is limited and seasonal.

They stand beside Santa Maria Antica, a minute's walk from Piazza dei Signori and five from Piazza delle Erbe.

Allow fifteen to twenty minutes. This is a stop within a walk through the centre rather than a destination.

The street outside is level and accessible; the enclosure itself has uneven historic paving.

The view that matters is from the street, and the street is flat. A paved lane a minute from Piazza dei Signori — no steps, no gate, no ticket — and the wrought-iron railing is as much the exhibit as the tombs behind it. Verona's destination portal answers its own accessibility question for this monument with "completely accessible".

That makes this one of the few monuments in the city where the out-of-season, no-entry version is not a lesser visit. Cangrande I sits on the highest canopy and is read from outside the railing by everyone, ticket or no ticket.

Inside the enclosure is a finer question than the portal's answer covers. The ground in there is historic paving in a confined yard, and whether the gate itself has a step is not something anyone publishes — a tourist board calling a monument accessible is a judgement about the monument, not a survey of its threshold. If getting inside the railing matters, ask the civic museums before you plan around it.

The tombs are exposed white marble that has stood in the open for seven centuries, and their condition shows it. Do not touch the railing's stonework or lean on the enclosure.

This is a narrow street on a busy walking route. Photographers stopping at the railing block it easily -- step aside rather than standing in the flow.

Santa Maria Antica alongside is a working church; keep quiet near its door.

Seeing Cangrande's original statue at Castelvecchio rather than only the copy here is worth the museum ticket, and supports the collection conserving it.