Chiesa di San Fermo Maggiore

Chiesa di San Fermo Maggiore rises in Verona with Romanesque foundations and a Gothic upper church. Two churches occupy one building: the lower level honours Saints Firmus and Rusticus, local martyrs from the third century. Benedictine monks built the Romanesque church during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, on the site of an older sanctuary. Franciscan builders added the upper church in the early fourteenth century, leaving the lower structure intact.

Guglielmo da Castelbarco supported the transformation, which brought higher walls, a Gothic apse, and a wooden ceiling shaped like an upturned ship. Frescoes fill the presbytery, while the arco santo shows Castelbarco and Fra’ Daniele Gosmari beside inscriptions mentioning 1314. The campanile holds six bells cast in 1755, still rung in the traditional Veronese style. Medieval frescoes stand alongside works by Veronese, Turone, and Giovanni Battista Belloti.

The Brenzoni Monument brings sculpture and painting together in one vivid wall tomb. Nanni di Bartolo carved the Resurrection with Christ, four sleeping soldiers, three angels, and two putti holding curtains. Above it, Pisanello’s Annunciation dates from 1426 and is regarded as his earliest major surviving work. A chapel in the right transept recalls Dante’s family through its Alighieri founders and a 1547 altarpiece by Giovanni Battista del Moro.