Equestrian Statue of Cangrande I della Scala

In July 1329 Cangrande della Scala rode into Treviso as its lord, a city he had fought over for years, and within days he was dead, at 38. When his body was exhumed in 2004, scientists found toxic levels of digitalis, the poison of the foxglove plant, in his liver and gut. The most likely explanation is that someone poisoned him. Who did it remains unknown.

His nephew and successor Mastino II saw to the tomb, raised over the side door of the church of Santa Maria Antica beside the family palaces, and this horseman stood on its very top, in the open air above the street. It has paid for that height. Lightning threw it to the ground in the 17th century, and it was pieced back together and put back. A 19th-century restoration remade several parts, among them the helmet hanging down his back and part of the horse's long cloth covering, and the paint that once coloured the whole group is gone. Early in the 20th century the statue was taken down to protect it, and a copy still rides on the tomb in its place.