Fontana di Madonna Verona

This guide to the Fontana di Madonna Verona walks Piazza delle Erbe, the market square where Verona's vegetable sellers have set up since the Middle Ages. It traces how the fountain at its center came to be built in 1368 under the city's ruling Scaliger lord, running on water freshly channeled in from a nearby river, and lingers on a battered Roman statue that had stood in the square since antiquity. You'll hear how generations of traders and porters used its water and worn stone rim in the centuries since. Stand at the basin's edge, where a few produce stalls still trade nearby.