After leaving the hellscape that is Juliet's balcony, we walked down another alley to Piazza dei Signori. There are five centuries worth of buildings that define the square. They are linked by arches, including a whale's rib hanging high above a passageway.
There is a statue of Dante in the middle of square. Expelled from Florence when the pope criticized Dante's Inferno, the Italian poet was welcomed by the ruling family, the Scaligeris. The rulers of Verona sided with the Holy Roman Empire instead of the pope at that time, which of course meant (I've written myself into a corner. I must confess I have no idea what that meant).
(Editor: I always thought Scaligeri is a type of Italian pastry. Writer: Hey, leave the bad jokes to me!)
The Scaligeri Palazzo is from the 14th century, and is a beautiful brick crenellated building from the 1300s. There is also the Portico of the Counsel from the 1400s and the Palazzo della Ragione. We skipped climbing the Torre dei Lamberti (part of the latter palazzo) because we had already climbed to the top of the arena and that met the famed Thomas Jefferson recommendation to climb to the highest point in a city after arriving.
Then we went out of our way to go Galleria Iginio Massari, the Verona shop of the top pastry chef in Italy, several years running. The pastries were quite good -- we tried a range of smaller pastries, just to try different things.
The chef is a celebrity in Italy, and has his own books and other stuff to buy. Making pastry is not our thing, so while we enjoyed the food, we didn't buy any of the "celebrity chef" extras for sale. Definitely worth the stop.
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