Yesterday we saw the sundial on San Nicolò (=Saint Nicholas) church, and I hesitated before I identified the church as S. Nicolò (S =St). Here’s why.
First, S. Nicolò with the sundial:
Notice how it is brown and a bit drab.
Now here’s the front of S. Nicolò:
See what I mean? The front and the back are completely different. It wasn’t always that way — the front was once brown as well. There’s a story behind that, as you might imagine.
There are lots of churches in Verona, and some of them have interesting histories (including a couple I hope to write about another time). Some have been deconsecrated and used for other things — we have been to at least 3 pizza places that are in former churches, including one that you can see at the very right edge of the photo of the opposite side of the river in the No parking post.
One of these churches is called San Sebastiano (=Saint Sebastian), it is, or rather was, closer to river heading away from where we are staying. According to its Wikipedia entry, it had a checkered history, especially in the 1800s when it was deconsecrated and reconsecrated a couple times. The last straw came in 1944 when it was bombed by the Allies (probably accidentally, but if they were aiming for the train station, they were way off). Here’s what it looked like after the war. What you see is remains of the facade.
Source: S. Sebastiano after the war
Now I’ve never found the full story, but someone got the idea to take that ruined facade, restore it, and put it on the front of S. Nicolò! Maybe that someone heard of the English expression of robbing Peter to pay Paul, which also involves two churches, and got carried away…
Now if you look at the current facade of S. Nicolò, you’ll see that there is a triangular area, but then above that there is a second triangular portion. Apparently poor S. Sebastiano’s facade was too small for S. Nicolò and they had to extend it.
You might wonder what happened to S. Sebastiano. Well, the new city library was built in front of the remains, but you can still see a wall that remains if you ask the right librarian.
Another fun fact is that at some point way in the past, stone from L’Arena was used to repair S. Nicolò. It turns out, that L’Arena was long used as a source of stone for various reasons, but at some point in the Middle Ages, they put a stop to that. Anyway, here’s a photo of a piece of L’Arena incorporated into the side wall of S. Nicolò. It is the one with the fancy design.
If you want to see other photos of S. Nicolò, there are several on Wikipedia Commons.