VERONA: ARCH OF THE COAST...

The Costa Arch, located on Costa Street between Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza dei Signori, is a walkway connecting the Palace of the Region with the Domus Nova. This walkway was used to lead magistrates from their residence to the city courthouse, thus avoiding passing through the city streets where they could have been bribed by malevolent people in the process of sentencing the trials that followed.

Added to this interesting connection is the fascination of the presence of a bone hanging in its central keystone whose origin is not certain.

Its location seems to date from the early 1600s to the mid-1700s, and numerous hypotheses are linked to it...

 

Some think it may be the fossil of a marine reptile called an ichthyosaur found in the Lessini Mountains and later hung on the arch as a protective function of the city of Verona.

Another assumption is that the bone is a "devil's rib," a relic recovered by the Crusaders during the Battle of Lepanto against the Turks in 1571.

In fact, the most likely hypothesis identifies it as a whale rib hung by an apothecary store (modern-day pharmacy) as a sign to attract customers. Whale bone powder was in fact used in medicine of the time to cure various ailments.

 

Legend has it that the bone will fall only when a pure-hearted and honest person passes under the arch...

 

 

We would like to thank the following sources for the information gathered and invite you to further investigate:

 

 

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Reference Photo:

 

Photo arch close up

Son of Groucho from Scotland, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Photo arc

Dimitris Kamaras from Athens, Greece, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Photo Via della Costa

lienyuan lee, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Photos Verona

Photo 49273645 © / Dreamstime.com