Museums, art and wine

Early morning walk over the Adige

View over Verona from the park

On this morning walk I today let my feet carry me without any predetermined plan and after crossing the Adige at Ponte Pietro I randomly selected a street heading up into the hills and eventually arrived at the gate entrance for Park Colombare, a massive area with open fields, structured playgrounds, ornamental gardens and fabulous views over the city of Verona. After a long wander I returned to the city for the first and best coffee of the day and then back to the Aurora for the usual delicious breakfast on the terrace overlooking Piazza Erbe.

My first port of call was the interesting and beautiful Gothic/Romanesque church of San Fermo, built in several iterations on the site of an early Paleo Christian church. With a lower Romanesque basilica revealing traces of some very early 11C frescoes and a far more decorative Gothic upper basilica with the most elaborate and lovely wooden boat ceiling, this is a must see but for the hour of my visit I was luckily the sole guest!

 

Upper Basilica interior San Fermo

Wooden boat Ceiling

wonderful Pisanello Crucifixion

Lower Basilica San Fermo

10 C fresco

On to the magnificent Castelvecchio, built as a fortress in the 14C by the lords of Verona, the Scagliere clan, it is now a wonderful Art Museum restored sympathetically by architect Carlo Scarpi after significant bombing damage during WW2. The museum takes a chronological approach and leads the viewer from 10,11 &12 C marble and stone sculpture to 18C paintings. I have a number of all time favourites; including a Donatella Madonna and Child, an agonized Christ on the cross and paintings by Caroto of the extremist monk Savonarola, with a very intense and almost mad expression and at the other extreme, a young child proudly presenting his drawing. He could have been one of my grandchildren!

Donatella Madonna

Child with drawing, Carroto

Caroto Savaranola

Castelvecchio

I was booked for a wine tour in the afternoon with the marvelous Pagus Valpolicellaso settled for lunch in an excellent café/restaurant across from the museum where I had a most delicious mixed salad with also tuna and egg. This is also the meeting point for Pagus, and right on queue the vehicle arrived driven by the vivacious and intelligent Laura who was conducting the tour.  A modern languages and economics graduate Laura is very enthusiastic about her job and is hoping to pursue a wine related career. Also on board was an American Italian family of father mother and adult son and an Irish woman and her Dutch husband. It turned out that the American parents loved Trump and the son did not- so some interesting discussion!!!

 

Vineyard Salvaterra

We visited two wineries, both in the classic region but one at much greater altitude, which certainly affected the character of the wine. At Salvaterra we had an initial tour of the vineyards- in a park like setting then the cellars and finally to the main game, the tasting. Unlike the usual practice in Australia, wine tasting in Italy is a formal affair with places set at table and food to accompany the wine- in this case local cheeses. The Valpolicella region is red producing, (Amarone, and Classico, but whites are  also produced, and we enjoyed an exceptional pinot grigio as well as the wonderful reds. Despite my resolution to buy no wine I was unable to resist with the rationalization that it was only for consumption while in Italy. 

 

Tasting 

On the second leg of the tour to Accordinini Stefano, Laura pointed out the pergola vineyard trellising particular to the region which shelters the grapes from the fierce summer sun. Picking is also entirely by hand so that the best grapes are selected for the amarone wine, the pinnacle. Soon we arrived to a much smaller family operation and as it happened the patriarch of the family Stefano turned 94 on the day with a family party in full swing. Family business is the preferred model in Italy as legislated wages are not necessarily paid to relatives so the business is sustainable through generations.

 

View from Accordinini Stefano

More excellent wine but I restrained the urge to buy and after taking photos of the wonderful view we returned to Verona and generously Laura dropped me off close to the hotel, in view of my purchases. By now it was 6.30 and I detoured down a lovely lane to the small outside bar where Willy and I tended to end the afternoon in Verona and with a glass of crisp souave the white of the region watched the world go by. With my time in Verona closing in I chose quite a trendy looking tapas place for dinner- even though I am on my own and had an excellent small taster meal of horse tartar, grilled octopus and pumpkin salad. 

What an elegant and beautiful city is Verona!