Verona's gallery of modern art is situated in Palazzo Forti, part of a block of buildings occupying what was originally a Roman site and now bounded by the roads Via Forti, Via Massalongo, Corso Sant'Anastasia, and Vicolo Due Mori.
The original structure of Palazzo Forti was built in the 13th century though the only part that can now be dated with certainty to this period is the so-called Wing of Ezzelino da Romano. This was named after Ezzelino III, the tyrannical 'captain of the people' who governed Verona from 1232 to 1259 following his marriage to Selvaggia, the natural daughter off the emperor Frederick II. After the bloody death of Ezzelino the building underwent many transformations, above all during the ascendancy of the Scaligera family. Over the years the medieval structure has been subjected to three main interventions. The first occurred halfway through the fifteenth century after the building had been bought by the Emilei family which had moved to Verona from the fief of Montirone near Brescia in 1416. They converted it into a residential building with reception rooms, libraries, gardens, courtyards, services etc. The second intervention dates from the sixteenth century; the third from the eighteenth and consisted of the reconstruction of the main facade by the architect Ignazio Pellegrini. The house became an important cultural, political, and artistic meeting point.
Napoleon was a guest here of Francesco Emilei, the city superintendent who, ironically enough, was then condemned to death as an insurrectionist by a tribunal, headed by Napoleon himself, which was deaf to the pleas of the noblewoman Silvia Curtoni Verza with whom Francesco Emilei was having a love-affair. From all accounts this was a real-life version of Tosca, with a supposedly fake execution which turned out to be the real thing, followed by an attempted suicide by Silvia who, however, was later on to be romantically involved with the poet Ippolito Pindemonte… Subsequently Pietro Emilei, an ardent member of the Carbonari society, was forced for financial reasons to rent the first floor of the building to the Austrian grand-ducal command under General Radetzky. As a result the building was enlarged and extended as far as the present Via Massalongo.
The Austrian occupation was the period of the building's greatest public renown. It was the same Pietro Emilei who, after being imprisoned in Salzburg for belonging to a secret society, returned to Verona and in 1854 sold the building to Israele Forti who at once began its complete reconstruction. In 1937 Achille Forti, an illustrious botanist and the last of the Forti line, left the complex to the city of Verona which, in accordance with his wishes, converted it into a museum of modern art. After just a year the museum closed and was to reopen only after the war, first as an art school and then as the administration offices of town council until about 1950.
In 1966 Professor Licisco Magagnato superintended further restorations and revealed the medieval structures. In the meantime, though for just a few months, the museum began to function again, only to be closed, with the exception of a few shows, until the 80s.
In 1982 the city council decided on the definitive establishment of the gallery which was inaugurated on 14th March of the same year. Since then, under the direction of Professor Giorgio Cortenova, the gallery has organised many important exhibitions dedicated to the most significant artists and movements of the national and international scene, from Gnoli to Cintoli, Capogrossi to Baj, Leoncillo to Pozzati, de Chirico to Tancredi, Degas to Guttuso, Astratta to Scuole romane, the Impressionists to Modigliani, the Expressionists to Magritte, Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky and others. The permanent collection has also been further built up to include works by Fattori, Casorati, Birolli, Hayez, Semeghini, Guidi, Dall'Oca Bianca, Trentini etc.