Rooms Castelvecchio
for your stay in Verona
Rooms Castelvecchio is the ideal place to stay for a wonderful holiday in Verona, in a palace considered one of the architectural masterpieces of the city. Rooms Castelvecchio has four elegant and comfortable apartments located on the third floor of Palazzo Canossa, a building located in the historic center of Verona, and accessible by car.
This palace was built by Michele Sanmicheli on commission from the Canossa family around 1530.
Deciding to have a building, built outside the ancient core of the city of Verona, was a very courageous act at that time. Corso Cavour was mostly characterized by medieval buildings that were not so prestigious or beautiful so it was a real act of valorization of the Course that takes, as its starting point, the urban architectural style of Via Postumia.
The idea was to build a mansion that would be based on roman-latin architectural style . At the time the "Arco dei Gavi" was just in the middle of the road, and at the end of "Porta dei Borsari". Canossa Palace is a masterpiece of Sanmicheli that smartly overcame the medieval concept of fortress palaces, creating a stately and elegant residence, open to play of light and chiaroscuro, instead of mansions that normally looked barricaded, defensive and equipped with hostile towers.
During the fifteenth century it was decorated by the best painters in Verona (Battista del Moro, Bernardino India and Paolo Veronese among others), and Tiepolo who frescoed the hall of the piano nobile (noble floor), with the "Apotheosis of Hercules", which then collapsed because of the bombing that hit Verona during the Second World War.
In the sixteenth century, the palace was enlarged with the addition of the two river facing wings and then, in the eighteenth century, crowned by a balustrade with mythological statues.
In the eighteenth century, it has offered hospitality to some of the most important men in Europe, including Napoleon Bonaparte, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the Austrian emperors Franz Ferdinand and Franz Joseph.
The lower floor is punctuated by very regular rectangular windows. You may also notice that one of the grates appears to be scarred by a bombing of World War II.
In the lower part, the string course is characterized by a frieze showing some little dogs in succession. The dog is the coat of arms of the Canossa family. The family's motto was: 'when the dog finishes his bones, Canossa house ''will end''.
In 1761 the roof was raised on the occasion of the raising of the hall on the main floor, whose ceiling was later painted by Tiepolo. To hide this building alteration, an external balustrade adorned with statues was erected; this fits perfectly into the facade and increases its originality. There are eight allegorical statues that were placed to ornament the balustrade that surmounts the facade of Palazzo Canossa. These statues symbolize arts and sciences, such as Architecture and History, or virtues, such as Loyalty and Honour; they are arranged symmetrically and specularly: the first four are turned to the right, the next to the left. At both ends there are two soldiers with the helmet on their heads and holding their shields. Starting from the left, there is a crowned woman, who stands beside a sitting child with a model of a building: this symbolizes Architecture. The next statue depicts an other female figure who offers a bone to a dog that is sitting next to her: This represents Loyalty and the whole image even remembers the name of Canossa (Can(e)ossa which in Italian means Dog bones). Next to Loyalty, the representation of History is personified by an old man who looks behind himself using a mirror and holding a shield, and then, the statue of a bearded man who rests on a shield which symbolizes Honor.
The building looks charming even if it's seen from the other side of the Adige. The river was an important way of communication at that time and therefore the prestige and social status of the family had to be noticed from the river side as well.
