Castles and cherries

The itinerary is mostly by car, but some short walks will take you to see a few off-route sights. Colognola ai Colli (8505 inhabitants) owes its name to the Latin Coloniola, small colony. After 148 BC when the Via Postumia was built, the eleventh legion of veterans Claudia Pia Fedele settled here, establishing a Roman vicus. The town is 14 km east of Verona on the provincial road to San Bonifacio, at the beginning of the Val d'Illasi. The municipality has six neighbourhoods: Monte, Villa or Piano, San Zeno, Cadellara-Pieve, Strà  and San Vittore.

A twenty-minute drive will take you to Tregnago (4902 inhabitants). In the Val d'Illasi, inhabited by the Rheti, an ancient population from the Eastern Central Alps, in prehistoric times. The Roman settlement was situated on the Cardo Maximus of the ancient centuriation of the Veronese ager atesino (territory crossed by the river Adige) and near the Via Postumia that connected Genoa and Aquileia: the name Tregnago, in fact, seems to come from the Latin terminiacus, meaning boundry or border. In the Middle Ages a castle was built and was mentioned in documents dating to 1259. It was fortified during the Scala domination and donated to the town by Cangrande della Scala, Lord of Verona between 1291 and 1329. The building is now in poor condition, but the gateway and some towers are still visible. The Church of San Dionigi also belongs to this period, a small Romanesque building renovated with gothic elements in 1369 by Domenico Murar. The church, which preserves precious frescoes of the 14th century, was originally part of a monastery, dependent on the monastery of San Zeno in Verona, and is now incorporated in Villa Cuzzeri, formerly Erbisti.

The most outstanding religious building of Tregnago is the Romanesque church of San Martino or Chiesa della Disciplina (Church of the Discipline). The exterior is simple and free of decorative elements, with the exception of the prothyrum above the doorway. The frescoes inside by the famous painter of Verona Nicolò Giolfino and a painting partly attributed to Felice Brusasorzi are particulary interesting.

Apart from religious buildings, in Tregnago you can also visit the 18th century Villa Pellegrini, now the Town Hall, which houses works of the Veronese painter Andrea Porta. Here and there in the town some washbasins in local stone still survive. They were still in use in a recent past and also served as meeting places. The oldest one is close to the ancient parish church Santa Maria Assunta, built in 1879, in replacement of the old parish church dedicated to Santa Maria, quoted by Eugene III's papal bull in 1145. Other basins are in Via Rì, in Marcemigo, in Scorgnano and in Cogollo.

If you take the Strada dei Ciliegi (Cherry Route- Provincial Road 37/a), a beautiful natural setting, you will reach Cazzano di Tramigna (1565 inhabitants). The name Cazzano could be reffered to the gens (Roman family line) Cassia. According to another theory it come from gadum,  wooded hunting area, or cadianum, place of mutatio (change of horses) along the Roman road Via Postumia. Tramigna is the name of the small stream that comes to surface in the centre of the village. t

In Roman times Cazzano was part of the aforementioned ager atesino, as testified by various inscriptions discovered in the area. Some interesting places to visit here are the Romanesque sanctuary of San Felice (9th-10th century) that preserves inside numerous frescoes by maestro Cicogna and which hosted Pope Lucius III in 1185; the Parish Church of San Giorgio Martire, built in the late 19th century on a partially preserved existing building, the Romanesque church of San Pietro in Brian (early 16th century). Finally, if you stop in the main square of Cazzano you will find a fountain called Lago della Mora, referring to a particular variety of cherry cultivated in these areas.

This long journey ends in Montecchia di Crosara (4433 inhabitants), less than 20 minutes drive from Cazzano. It is located in the middle of the Valdalpone (from the river Alpone), about 33km from Verona.

The municipality includes the villages of Albarè, Castello, Grumolo, Meggiano, Tolotti. The name Crosara comes from its geographical position, a crossroads of the variuos highways and waterways of the area. At the end of the 10th century the territory became a fief of the son of Umberto Maltraversi, lord of Padua and Vicenza, then of the Scaligeri, dominators of Verona in the 12th century.

During the Scala period the town was the scene of violent clashes between Guelphs and Ghibellines and heavily looted. The castle that protected the area was finally demolished by Vinciguerra Bonifacio in 1222. Montecchia was then dominated by the Visconti of Milan and the Venetian Republic, and became an autonomous town in 1745.

Architectual gem of the town is the church of San Salvatore, in the neighbourhood of Castello, a name that refers to a fortified structure built by Maltraversi in the 10th century. The church, built perhaps on the ruins of a pagan temple, was built in the 11th century, but was later heavily reworked. Inside there are frescoes painted between the 14th and 16th century.