Arche Scaligere Historical Timeline

The della Scala buried themselves in the street rather than inside their parish church, which was the point: the monuments were built to be read by anyone walking past. They grew taller and more elaborate as the dynasty’s confidence did, and the sequence can be read as a family competing with its own predecessors.

Chronology

1. 14th century Cangrande I’s tomb is built first, to his own instructions, over the door of Santa Maria Antica. Placing it on the church wall rather than inside is the decision every later tomb answers to.
2. 1301 Alberto II’s tomb is erected.
3. 1345 Mastino II’s tomb is begun, and altered while still under construction — the ambition outgrowing the design mid-build.
4. 1359 Andriolo de’ Santi finishes Giovanni’s monument, originally for the church of San Fermo Maggiore rather than this enclosure.
5. 1375 Bonino da Campione completes Cansignorio’s tomb, the most elaborate of the group.
6. c. 1400 Giovanni’s monument is moved here to join the others, which is why the enclosure gathers tombs that were not all made for it.
7. 1879 Cansignorio’s tomb is taken as the model for the funerary monument of Charles II, Duke of Brunswick, in Geneva — a Veronese design still being copied five hundred years later.

How they were made to be seen

Every tomb uses the same arrangement: a sarcophagus raised on columns, sheltered by a carved stone canopy, topped by an equestrian figure of the man inside. Raising the sarcophagus puts the effigy above head height and against the sky; setting the group in the open means the audience is the street.

The wrought-iron enclosure carries the ladder emblem of the family — scala means ladder — repeated through the ironwork and the carving. Nearly five centuries in a crowded city centre have left the canopies remarkably intact, largely because the finest carving is high up and sheltered by the canopies themselves.