2 Best Sights in Italy

On a little square off Piazza dei Signori are the fantastically sculpted Gothic tombs of the della Scala family, who ruled Verona during the late Middle Ages. The 19th-century English traveler and critic John Ruskin described the tombs as graceful places where people who have fallen asleep live. The tomb of Cangrande I (1291–1329) hangs over the portal of the adjacent church and is the work of the Maestro di Sant'Anastasia. The tomb of Mastino II, begun in 1345, has an elaborate baldachin, originally painted and gilded, and is surrounded by an iron grillwork fence and topped by an equestrian statue. The latest and most elaborate tomb is that of Cansignorio (1375), the work principally of Bonino da Campione. Visitors with a Verona civic sight ticket can enter the compact gated grounds for a closer view, although all the major tombs are visible from the street.

Exiled from his native Florence, the author of The Divine Comedy died here in 1321, and Dante's tomb and bones (which over the centuries were secretly stashed in various spots nearby) lies in a small neoclassical building by the church of St. Francis. Nearby a Dante Circuit consists of the immersive, multimedia Museo Dante and more meditative Casa Dante with Dantean artifacts from the Biblioteca Classense and the Uffizi. The Florentines have long been trying to reclaim their famous son, but the Ravennans argue that since Florence did not welcome Dante in life, it does not deserve him in death. Perhaps as penance, every September the Florentine government sends olive oil that's used to fuel the light hanging in the chapel's center.