Walking in Valpolicella along the Adige

ROUTE 1

The first route starts from Piazza San Rocco, the historic center of the town surrounded by alleys, arcades, courtyards and some ancient houses that still bear excerpts of wall paintings.
Leaving the small church of San Rocco (1) behind you, following the Adige in a westerly direction, you go down a few steps and take the path on the ancient towpath.
To the right before the new bridge is a hydrometer dated 1909 and shortly after a few meters high you can see a high relief by the sculptor Giovanni Giacopini.
Adjacent to the second bridge on the way stands a significant building unfortunately abandoned, the former headquarters of the Royal Guardia di Finanza (2).
Continuing near the cathedral on the left, the base of a brick and shaped stone dewatering wheel emerges from the vegetation (around 1900).
On the right, the square of the majestic church of San Lorenzo dominates (3) and then you skirt the Mandella district, where once there was a furnace and a "restara" (number 18), a sort of station with lodgings and stables for the use of boatmen and draft animals, which bears a coat of arms of the Salvi family, owners of these buildings in the eighteenth century. At number 10 on the walls there are traces of a sacred image from the 16th century and near the shore there are significant remains of the small pier that made mooring safer for boats.
The path continues winding between the river and the boundary wall of a vast agricultural land up to the bridge which connects the village of Arcé (4) with the right bank of the river.
Here on the right you can see two of the turrets that delimit the park of Villa Albertini-da Sacco (5).
At the entrance to the bridge there are also interesting paintings of the Madonna with saints and, at number 11, a valuable fresco dated 1519 with the Madonna, San Lorenzo and San Rocco as well as a Salvi coat of arms.
Shortly after, a path branches off to the right between ancient walls which leads to the Romanesque church of San Michele (6).
Further on are the remains of an irrigation canal with high pillars which, when it was in use, was powered by a pumping plant with no less than four wheels.
After passing the small district of Murette, proceed towards Rovejago, a stretch in which the Adige widens its bed and another stump of irrigation canal dominates this point of the path.
After a short stretch, the picturesque Tegnente district can be seen on the right, surrounded by a large orchard and a mighty arch, the remains of another drainage plant that marks the point where an earthen mill already present in eighteenth-century maps was located.
To get to Santa Lucia (7) continue on a well-marked path and once you get near the small town, leaving the towpath, it is worth stopping in front of the ancient church dedicated to Santa Lucia (8).
Returning to the path, immediately on the right you can see the pillars of a dewatering plant from the second half of the 19th century and following a particularly beautiful stretch of path, which winds through the luxuriant vegetation, you continue up to Ponton (9), this last stretch of path is classified as a naturalistic oasis

ROUTE NOTES -1-

(1) The church of San Rocco is a modest-sized building with a bell tower with merlons, inside, behind the Baroque altar, traces of the wall decorations remain and the foundations of the primitive church can be seen under the floor of the apse.

(2) The large building has a simple facade looking directly onto the towpath. Probably of seventeenth-century origin, then rebuilt in the nineteenth century, it shows two interesting heads in the keystone of the entrances depicting Umberto I of Savoy and Queen Margherita.

(3) The majestic church of San Lorenzo, built in the second half of the eighteenth century, is neoclassical with baroque elements. On the left side it shows the bell tower about 80 m high at the base of which a sarcophagus lid from the Roman era has been walled up. Next to the parish remains the old Romanesque-Baroque church inside which the ethnographic museum "Work and traditions along the Adige river" is set up.

(4) Arcé is a small village that preserves the charm of the old days almost intact and the discovery of stone material from the Roman era confirms its ancient origin.

(5) Villa Albertini-Da Sacco is a spectacular complex with a large building with decorated ceilings, preceded by the garden, the cottages and the chapel of Sant'Anna. Along the wall of the park there are turrets of various shapes.

(6) The church of San Michele stands isolated to the west of the town and was built between the 11th and 12th centuries. On the southern portal there is a palindrome inscription “sator arepo tenet opera rotas” (read backwards it remains unchanged). Inside, fragments of fresco remain, among which the most significant is that of San Michele painted in the apse basin.

(7) Santa Lucia, a secluded locality on the Adige with an agricultural vocation, has been reported as a vicus (village) since the 9th century.
In the 19th century there were two earthen mills.

(8) The old church of Santa Lucia is a small building with a gabled façade dating back to the 12th century, inside it shows late medieval and other 17th-18th century wall paintings.

(9) Ponton was in the past a river port where marble and Valpolicella wine were embarked. The name probably derives from the term "pontoon" a particular type of barge-boat.

ROUTE 2

Yes, take this route, leaving the center of the village with the church of San Rocco behind you, going west along the river you pass the district known as Le Grotte.
From there starts a steep cobblestone climb that ends near Corte Castello, a group of ancient houses.
From this point of the towpath you can enjoy a wide panorama of the entire bend of the Adige and further on you come across a farmhouse which retains the imprint of a large wall painting on one side. Near the river, the ruins of a mill remain covered by vegetation.
The towpath winds at this point a short distance from the Adige flanked by walls surrounding the fields until it reaches the secluded district of Tremolé. It then continues among locust trees and willows.
The route changes near the mill called "del Progno" built directly on the Adige next to the stream from which it takes its name: the Progno di Fumane.
A few meters later the path bends eastwards between a wall that borders a field and the Adige. You soon arrive on a stretch of paved road in view of the town of Settimo (10) characterized in this perspective by the spectacular irrigation canal that crosses the orchard of Villa Bertoldi.
The building consists of about twenty brick pillars and arches that support the actual channel made of stone.
The old houses in the Porto district show some interesting construction details such as the stone plaque which indicates the level reached by the flood of the Adige in 1882. From here you can quickly reach the three villas inland which ennoble the locality of Septimus (11).
Going back along the shore, after half a kilometre, you reach Sabbioni, made up of a solitary house with some late 19th-century decorations inside. You then arrive at the Ramon district where a distance marker (40 km with Trentino) remains at the side of the path.
This part of the river is particularly suggestive due to the rich vegetation that grows on the banks.
Further on one reaches the Colombina court located a short distance from the river (12) and continuing one arrives at Nassar, once the site of a hospitale for wayfarers, which preserves ancient buildings with interesting architectural elements, such as the old mill, now a residential complex.
The towpath continues towards Parona and then reaches Verona.

ROUTE NOTES -2-

(10) The locality of Settimo, whose name derives from the seventh Roman milestone along the Via Claudia Augusta between the 16th and 18th centuries, was chosen as a holiday resort by some noble Veronese families who built richly decorated houses and gardens there.

(11) Villa Sparavieri is a fifteenth-sixteenth century building with a portico and an elegant loggia with columns whose chimneys are of some interest.
Villa Vascone-Bricci, today Manni, consists of a building with stone stairs on the two facades, wings, porticoes and dovecotes.
Villa Bertoldi took on its current appearance in the eighteenth century with subsequent nineteenth-century modifications. The sober building retains interesting furnishings and is surrounded by cottages, gardens, the park and there is a precious chapel dedicated to Sant'Antonio da Padova and an ancient votive aedicule of Our Lady of Sorrows.

(12) In an isolated position, the "Colombina" formerly villa "Morandina" is a group of houses around a square courtyard, in some rooms there are wall paintings of a certain interest