Piazza delle Erbe ★★

The central square of Verona, Italy, is the city's main market and living room surrounded by ancient, medieval and baroque monuments

This bustling marketplace—the palazzi-flanked "Square of the Herbs"—sits on the former site of the Roman Forum where chariot races once took place.

The produce and flower market

The umbrella-shaded market stalls ★★ remain—though the herbs, spices, coffee beans, and bolts of silks and damasks that once passed through the Verona market after landing in Venice from faraway Cathay (China) have given way to the fresh and aromatic produce of one of Italy's wealthiest agricultural regions—offset by the inevitable T-shirt and food vendors.

But the perfume of fennel and vegetables fresh from the earth still assaults your senses in the early morning, mixing with the cacophony of vendors touting plump tomatoes, salad greens, and picture-perfect fruits.

Add to this the canary lady, the farmer's son who has brought in a half a dozen puppies to unload, and the furtive pickpocket who can spot a tourist at 50 paces—and you have one of Italy's loveliest little outdoor markets.

The Virgin of Verona fountain

A ground-zero rest-stop is one of the steps leading up to the small, 14th-century fountain in the piazza's center.

It was raised by Cansignorio della Scala in 1368, but the statue on top—dubbed Madonna Verona or The Virgin of Verona ★—is actually an ancient Roman statue from AD 380.

The Capitello

The time-bitten stone gazebo perched atop a three-stepped pedestal is called the Capitello di Verona, or the Tribuna.

Throughout the Middle Ages, men elected to the post of Podestà (mayor)—and other lords of Verona—had to stand here and take an oath of fealty—directed to the square's statues—to serve with city of Verona.

It was also—as in many Roman and medeival marketplaces in Europe—the site of various standardized measuring devices used to keep the merchants honest.

The long northeastern edge of Piazza delle Erbe

Everyone immediately notices the colorful—if faded—frescoes covering the facade of the Casa Mazzanti ★, named for the family who in the early 1500s converted what had been the wheat storehouses of Alberto I della Scala.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Verona had more than 300 such frescoed facades—and was, indeed, known as the Urbus picta (painted city). The frescoes on the Mazzanti House are by Alberto Cavalli with ethical allegories about ignorance, envy, and the practice of good government.

Verona was also once crowded with tower-houses, of which the best remaining is the Torre dei Lamberti ★★, at 84m (277 feet) the tallest tower in town. You can climb it; admisson also covers a Gallery of Modern Art in the neighboring red-and-white striped Palazzo della Ragione. » more

The short northwestern edge of Piazza delle Erbe

The shortest side of the piazza—just bayond the column toped by a Venetian Lion of St. Mark—is closed by the baroque facace of Palazzo Maffei ★ (1468–1668), topped by a conga line of states of Greco-Roman gods.

Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Apollo, and Minerva are all baroque manufacture, but Hercules is believed to be an ancient Roman original left over from when this was the site of the Capitolum (campidoglio), built in the 1st century BC with a temple to worship Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.

You can actually see some of the remains of that ancient Roman capitol structure in the building's basement, now the wine cellars of Ristorante Maffei (Piazza Erbe 38, tel. 045-801-0015, www.ristorantemaffei.it). It's only open during the restaurant's business hours (lunch and dinner daily—though closed Sun Oct 15–Mar 15)

To the left of Palazzo Maffei rises a medieval holdover, the Gardello Tower, or “Torre delle Ore," where the bells still toll every hour in Verona's oldest public clock.

The long southwestern edge of Piazza delle Erbe

Now home to a bank, the crenellated Domus Mercatorum was the seat of Verona's medieval merchants' guild, rebuilt in its current appearence at the turn of the 14th century by Alberto I della Scala to give the powerful Wool Guild a new stone headquarters.

Stretching beyond the Casa dei Mercanti are the (remaining lower storeys) of the so-called "Ghetto houses," Italy's typical medeival tower-houses.

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