San Giorgio in Braida

Seen from the Adige, Verona's river, the dome of San Giorgio in Braida rises over the left bank in the Veronetta district. It was designed by Michele Sanmicheli, Verona's leading Renaissance architect, who had learned his trade in Rome. The church beneath it was rebuilt from around 1480 for the Canons of San Giorgio in Alga, a Venetian religious order, on the site of a Benedictine monastery founded in 1046.

The reason art lovers cross the river is the high altar. In the mid-1560s Paolo Veronese, Verona-born but by then settled in Venice, painted the Martyrdom of Saint George for the apse. The saint kneels before the pagan idol he refuses to worship, while the sky opens above him onto the Virgin and saints. In 1797 French troops took the canvas to Paris, and it came back after Napoleon's fall. During the First World War it was sent to Florence for safekeeping.

The rest of the church is a small gallery of painting from Verona and beyond. Over the entrance hangs a Baptism of Christ by Tintoretto, and the side chapels hold altarpieces by the Veronese painters Girolamo dai Libri and Giovanni Francesco Caroto, with a Madonna and saints by Moretto da Brescia under the choir loft. The old organ shutters by Romanino, another painter from Brescia, now hang on facing walls.