della Scala

The della Scala, the Scaligeri, ruled Verona as signori from 1259, when Mastino I turned his podestà office into family rule, until 1387. Cangrande I, ruling from 1308, was its greatest prince: a Ghibelline soldier who added Vicenza, Padua and Treviso and patronised Dante, Petrarch and Giotto.

His nephew Mastino II bought Parma and Lucca and made Verona for a time northern Italy's strongest power, until a rival league defeated him in 1337—1340, leaving him only Verona and Vicenza. Later feuds were fratricidal: Cansignorio murdered Cangrande II in 1359, and Antonio killed his brother before Gian Galeazzo Visconti drove him from Verona in 1387.

Guglielmo della Scala's brief 1404 restoration ended with his death after ten days, and Verona passed to Venice in 1405. The family's Gothic tombs still stand beside Santa Maria Antica in Verona, while two celebrated humanist scholars, Julius Caesar and Joseph Justus Scaliger, claimed, probably falsely, to descend from the house.