Archaeological area of Corte Sgarzerie

Is it worth the trip?

If you are in Verona on a weekend morning, yes: it costs nothing, it is a two-minute walk from Piazza delle Erbe, and it is the one place where any part of the forum’s chief temple can be visited. Expect a small underground excavation, not a building: what you see is masonry and rubble that takes explanation to read, so a guide, whom the operator offers for €8, makes much of the difference. On a weekday it can be seen only with a booked visit or tour. It is not worth a journey on its own; it is worth fitting in between the Arena and Porta Borsari.

Getting there and what it costs

Corte Sgarzerie opens off Corso Porta Borsari through an arch with a plaque recalling the wool mills that once filled the courtyard (en.wikipedia; a Commons photograph’s description); the site’s address is Corte Sgarzerie 8p (the operator). It is about 100 m from Piazza delle Erbe, 300 m from Porta Borsari and 500 m from the Arena. Public transport stops in Via Rosa and Via Garibaldi are about 150 m away (OpenStreetMap). No car park is mapped near the courtyard; the car parks by the Arena are listed on the Verona page.

From the operator’s page, read 23 October 2026:

• Free opening: Saturday and Sunday 09.00–13.00, free. Booking your entry by e-mail is strongly advised, since the site holds few people; a guided visit can be requested for €8 a person.
• Other days: guided visits for individuals or small groups on request, by e-mail a few days ahead; €50 for a private group of up to ten.
• Guided tours: the 90-minute “Verona Sotterranea Express” takes in Corte Sgarzerie and the Via San Cosimo excavation, Monday to Saturday, in Italian, English or Spanish, listed at €20 a person, €15 for ages 7–14 and free under 7. A 90-minute augmented-reality walk through the forum area, “Il Capitolium in realtà aumentata”, ends in the cryptoporticus (€20, in Italian and English, booking required).

The excavation is underground, reached by a steep stair, poorly lit and unheated, and has no toilets (the operator; the description of a Commons photograph of the stair).

History

The Capitolium, the temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, stood on the north side of the forum, today’s Piazza delle Erbe (the operator; it.wikipedia). It was built in the second half of the 1st century BC and completed in 20 BC, to mark Verona’s promotion to a Roman municipium (it.wikipedia). It was deliberately modelled, in form and decoration, on the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol in Rome, though about a third smaller: three cellae, a front 35 m wide with three rows of six columns, and a length of about 42 m (it.wikipedia; the operator). It stood on an artificial terrace about 80 m across, and the cryptoporticus served to retain that terrace (it.wikipedia). An inscription found on the site names the man who paid for the gallery and porticoes: Marcus Magius, “cryptam fecit et porticus reposuit d(e) p(ecunia) s(ua)” (it.wikipedia).

The portico around the temple served as an archive, its walls hung with inscriptions and bronze tablets: laws, decrees, lists of magistrates and emperors, land registers (the operator). The two land-register fragments found in the cryptoporticus are a rare example of an ancient register; one, dated between 40 and 30 BC, records plots of the centuriated countryside with their owners’ names (it.wikipedia).

The complex fell into abandonment in the 4th century, with the spread of Christianity and probably a fire; an inscription of 379–380 already records a bronze statue being moved from the temple to the forum because it lay neglected (the operator; it.wikipedia). From the 5th century the buildings were stripped for building material, under Theodoric according to the operator. The gallery remained in use, but at the end of the 7th century or in the 8th, water and probably earthquakes brought down its west arm and much of the portico above it (the operator; it.wikipedia). It then served as a rubbish dump until the 9th or 10th century. Aristocratic families built their towers here from the 12th century, the loggia was raised in the 14th century for the wool trade, and the Monte di Pietà followed in the 15th (the operator; en.wikipedia).