Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore Site Features

The bronze doors

Forty-eight panels of scriptural scenes and the life of San Zeno, cast in two campaigns across the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The earlier panels are stiff and strange; the later ones markedly more assured. Few things in Italy show medieval sculpture changing so plainly in one place.

Mantegna's San Zeno Altarpiece

Painted 1457-60 for this altar, and one of the works that established the Renaissance in northern Italy. The predella panels below are copies; Napoleon took the originals, and two remain in Tours with one in the Louvre.

The Wheel of Fortune

Brioloto's rose window, with figures rising and falling on the rim.

The crypt

A forest of columns with San Zeno's body below the presbytery -- and the setting Shakespeare gives Romeo and Juliet's wedding.

San Zen che ride

A polychrome statue of the saint, smiling. Verona is fond of it.