Scaliger manor-house wanted from Cangrande IInd, was built in 1354-57 on existent fortifications. It was the lord's dwelling but also defensive garrison towards attacks from the city as well as towards the bridge that concurred the connection with the road for the Tyrol. It's composed by two units divided from the XIIIth century walls and seven external towers; the right unit encloses the greater courtyard, with the parade ground; the left one was the very scaliger royal palace, with tighter courtyard and double town-walls building. At its center, the high Mastio Tower (1375), from which it is approachable the Scaliger's Bridge crossing Adige river. After the fall of Scaliger family it was used as powder-magazine from the Venetians and in the XVIIIth century it accommodated the Military Academy of the Serenissima republic; later on, under the French and then Austrian dominion, it was used as barracks. In 1923 it took place a radical restoration that dismantled the military features of the monument, with the insertion of gothic and renaissance architectonic elements and the restoration of the battlements and the covering of the towers (eliminated during Napoleon's domain). In 1928 it became seat of Museum of Castelvecchio. In 1943 it hosted the assembly that ratified the Salò Republic and where it took place the process in which fascist leaders, who removed Mussolini, were sentenced to death (among them there was Mussolini's son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano). Damaged from the bombing, it stayed empty for almost ten years. In 1957 the architect Carlo Scarpa and the musem director, Licisco Magagnato, started a radical work of restoration, completed in 1964, brought back to the light the ancient Door of the Morbio that opened in the town-walls building of the XIIth century.

CASTELVECCHIO MUSEUM

Accommodated in Castelvecchio, it is divided in 29 halls where there are in exibition art works from the Christian age to XVIIIth century.