Carlo Scarpa in Verona

We went to Verona for our class trip on Wed. September 9. We toured the Banca Populare di Verona designed by Carlo Scarpa. Also, each week, the 14 students that are in the V.I.A. program separate into pairs, and we are required to pick a building in the city we will be visting that week, and write a page about it. For Verona, TJ and I actually chose this building the Banca Populare di Verona. So we already knew a little bit about this building. Also, if you chose a building that we will see during the walk through the city, you have to tell the class about the building as we stop in front of it, so for this one, TJ told everyone what we had learned about the bank.

Earlier in the day, before we visited the bank, we visited the Castelvecchio museum, also designed by Carlo Scarpa. This is a building that we have all seen and learned about since we started in architecture. The building is actually an old castle that was then bombed during WWII, so then Scarpa used what remained, and also added some new parts to the building. It is a museum that contains medieval period art, but a sad, but true fact is that, we all walked through it only looking at and taking pictures of the architecture. It is a very nice building.

An interesting aspect of the design, it the man on the horse statue shown in the picture below. The statue shows a man riding a horse who was part of a rich family from Verona. The statue was originally placed where he was buried, but now the statue is one of the main focal points within the museum. ( A replica is now at his burial site, we walked by it.) So, Scarpa designed the placement of the horse so that it could be seen from many different places, and it would seem that you would continue to get closer to it but you would never reach it.