Another Gothic church is Sant' Anastasia, which was commenced by the Dominicans in the thirteenth century and is still incomplete. The nave is very fine and has the same low vaulting that is a feature in the Cathedral; its walls, too, are cracked and held together by iron girders. Close to the west door in the interior are two humpbacked figures which hold the Holy Water basins and are of some interest. One of them was executed by the father of Paolo Veronese and the other by Alessandro Rossi, who took his cripple son "Gobbino" for his model.
The most interesting ecclesiastical fabric in the city is, however, the church of San Zenone. It is unspoilt by anything flamboyant or gaudy, and is a fine example of Romanesque architecture—some consider it the finest in North Italy. A ninth-century building stood here before the present structure was begun in 1138. The west façade is marble, the apse and sides of alternating brick and marble courses. The great portal is a most elaborate example of early twelfth-century work, on which are rudely sculptured knights engaging in deadly combat, scriptural subjects and imitations of Roman bas-reliefs with Latin inscriptions. Theodoric on horseback, with feet in stirrups—a very early representation of such—and Roman dress, engages in the chase of the deer with the Devil. The attendant dogs are evil spirits furnished to the Emperor by the Arch-fiend. The ninth-century bronze doors are very remarkable and consist of forty-two square plates fixed on to pine-wood. The subjects of each panel, which are Biblical, are most interesting; some of the little figures wear the conical flat-brimmed hat that may still be seen on the heads of the shepherds in the more remote districts of Venetia. These doors boast no handles, but two huge grotesque heads do duty instead, and are the means of opening and closing them. Above the portal is a wheel-of-fortune window executed by Briolotus. At the top is the figure of a king, and at the bottom lies a prostrate man; between these two are many figures climbing up and falling down in their efforts to reach the best place. The façade terminates in a gable, with a lean-to on either side.
The interior is very striking, not only in its good proportions but in its simplicity, which no side-altars mar. As in the cathedral at Chester, one enters from the west down a flight of steps, held a moment in admiration by the solemn grandeur of this fine church. The beautiful larch roof soars away far above the mellowed floor, the warm colour of the walls and depth of shadow through the arches of the crypt below the choir, create a harmony of colour from our point of vantage not often met with in Italy's churches. The aisles are divided from the nave by alternate piers and red marble pillars, the former with ascending Doric pilasters, two of which, near the west end, support a flying arch beneath the roof and are evident traces of an early vaulting. At the end of the nave, and occupying its last three bays, is the raised choir reached by two flights of marble steps on either side of those leading down into the crypt. On the red marble balustrade of the choir are figures of Christ and the twelve apostles. In a niche on the south side is a forbidding looking figure of S. Zeno, the patron saint of the city, who, being an African, is represented with a black face. The apse at the east end was rebuilt in the fifteenth century and has Gothic windows.
The old Benedictine cloisters of the once attached monastery stand on the north, and contain amongst other tombs twenty-nine of the Della Scalas. The cloisters and tombs are admirably preserved. The former consists of brick arches, pointed on the east and west, and round on the north and south, supported by coupled columns of red marble. Of Verona's forty churches these three are the most typical and interesting, and San Zenone, with its great architectural simplicity and wonderful campanile, holds the palm.
It is a city of shapely bell-towers; every church has one. Some are high, others low and unpretending; some are flat topped, others embattled or crowned by the red brick spire which greets one further west in the lake country. But the most beautiful of all is that which stands at a corner of the Piazza dei Signori, adjoining the Palazzo della Ragione, and rears its head over two hundred and fifty feet from the pavement below. Like a queen, this graceful Campanile del Municipio stands, dominating her subjects the other towers, with all the tinkling bells they contain. Across the river from the vantage-ground of the terrace on the hill beneath the Castello S. Pietro, Verona lies mapped out. Her dull red and brown roofs remind one of the harmonious colours of a Bokharan rug. Immediately below, at the foot of the hill, are the ruins of the Roman theatre, and the green waters of the Adige, rushing under the arches of the old stone bridge close by. Straight as a line ran the Roman street to the Porta dei Borsari, erected under the Emperor Gallienus in 265, and out into the country beyond. Between this old gateway, which stands athwart the street almost blocking it, and the river, is mediæval Verona, intersected and crossed by hundreds of vicoli, or lanes, and full of subjects for a painter's brush in the cortili that fringe them. At the corner of the Vicola Pigna and the "Alley of the Jutting Stone," is a low marble column with a huge fir-cone on the top, a reminiscence of Roman days. Near at hand is the fine palace that Sanmicheli erected for the Miniscalchi family, and in a lane a few steps away, a crumbling remnant of another fine house with a beautiful portal and row of windows. These are but a few things in the secluded byways of old Verona, where one's feet continually led one on journeys of discovery. Many a silent and deserted courtyard I found, where the grass shyly thrust its head between the cobblestones, and where creepers came wantonly trailing down over old walls in a sweet endeavour to hide the decay of man's handiwork.
From all these it is but a step to the focus of the city's life, the Piazza delle Erbe, the forum of Roman rule, and the most picturesque market square in Italy. In the centre—and seen in the sketch—is the small open tribune which occupies the place of an old building where the newly elected Capitano del Popolo was invested with the insignia of his office. The fountain farther up the square was erected by Berengarius in 916, and supplied with fresh water by Can Signorio. The figure surmounting it gazes stonily every day over a sea of umbrellas which shelter the market folk below. Can Signorio beautified his native city, and erected the tower at the end of the piazza—a tower which can boast of the first public clock. The Lion of St. Mark stands on an isolated column, surrounded by vegetable and fruit stalls, in front of the Palazzo Tresa, a highly ornate specimen of the seventeenth century. Many of the old houses still bear traces of the frescoes which covered them, and which at one time must have made Verona's streets veritable galleries of decorative art. Others retain the marble balconies which formed so fascinating a feature of the city's architecture.
Of earlier days there still remains one of the grandest ruins in Italy—the celebrated Amphitheatre. It was the night of a hot day; a blood-red moon, mounting on her upward path in the copper-coloured sky, left a grim mass of deep shadow beneath. Bats were hawking in and out of the black shadow, as yet unrelieved by the electric lights, and the spacious piazza was nearly empty. An ominous feeling, intensified by the distant hum of the busier parts of the city, unsettled one's nerves. My thoughts travelled back to the time when, there behind that gloomy mass, slaves would be cleansing the arena after a scene of cruel sport, and the distant hum was nothing but the excited throngs discussing the brutal slaughter. Did the great poet in his twilight wanderings ever see such a moon and such a sky? It was certainly an evening that would have enticed him to shun the noisy company of his fellow men and saunter alone in the shadow of the great Amphitheatre. Perhaps his spirit was there now. Small wonder that in my dreams that night the howls of a cruel audience and the gentleness of the lonely poet were mixed up in inextricable confusion.