Museo di Castelvecchio

Visit to the Museum in Verona, 20th August

Carlo Scarpa restored the 14th century castle in Verona after is suffered significant damage during the second World War. The castle already housed the cities collection of Veronese art, having been turned into a museum in 1924. Scarpa, created a contemporary gallery space within the restored building, and also transformed the way the collection is displayed, so that the building and the objects read as one architectural piece.

The ways in which Scarpa has complimented the historic structure with material, tone, and space is highly inspirational. The ancient and modern fabric coexist, even appearing as one organism. At times the restoration could be seen as quite extreme or radical; but due to the degree of bomb damage, restoration in any other way would have led to a pastiche recreation of the old structure where significant parts of this had been lost. Scarpa's interpretation is therefore somewhat more subtle as he continues to tell the story of this place without trying to return it to a previous condition, which would inevitably have involved more heavy-handed intervention. In particular, I admire the truthfulness of his this work as all of his interventions were done through modern construction methods with a preference for modern materials, such as concrete and metal.