"Michele made the Veronese Counts Della Torre a beautiful chapel as a round temple with the altar in the middle at their villa in Fumane”.
This is how the Renaissance artist and author Giorgio Vasari, in his book “The lives of the great painters, sculptors and architects” describes the ornamental temple of Villa Della Torre created by Michele Sanmicheli, a famous architect and town planner who did his greatest work in Verona and Venice.
The chapel has an octagonal layout but with irregular sides featuring four large niches on the long sides containing statues of the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). It is covered by an almost perfectly hemispherical cupola with a diameter of close to six metres. The cupola is simple and without ornamentation and sits directly on the octagonal sides of the building. The altar which was moved towards the apse in the 1800s originally stood in the centre as was the requirement of the “Circle of Spirituals” whose members included Bishop of Verona Gian Matteo Giberti and Francesco Della Torre.
This ornamental temple, which is still consecrated, is used to hold religious and civil ceremonies along with other moments with significant symbolic value.
