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Castelvecchio was built between 1354 and 1376 under Cangrande II della Scala, a member of the Scaliger family that ruled Verona through the 13th and 14th centuries. Cangrande II built the fortress not primarily to defend against outside invasion but against his own city -- his rule was unpopular enough that he needed a stronghold he could retreat to, and an escape route out of it, in case of internal revolt.
The attached Ponte Scaligero served exactly that purpose, giving the Scaliger family a direct route out of the castle and across the Adige River without passing through the city itself. The castle and bridge survived the Scaligers' own fall from power and Verona's later rule under Venice and then Austria, but suffered their most direct destruction far more recently: retreating German forces blew up the bridge in 1945 during the final days of World War II. It was rebuilt afterward using the original medieval stone, recovered from the riverbed where the collapse had left it.
Cangrande II della Scala commissioned the fortress that bears his family's name. Centuries later, the architect Carlo Scarpa led a restoration of the castle's interior between 1958 and 1964 that is now studied internationally as one of the 20th century's most influential works of museum design, reshaping how the historic structure could display the art and artifacts collected inside it without erasing the building's own layered history.
Castelvecchio's use shifted repeatedly with Verona's own changing rulers -- a Scaliger fortress, later a barracks under Austrian rule in the 19th century, its interior substantially altered each time. Scarpa's 20th-century restoration deliberately left visible the marks of these successive changes rather than erasing them in favor of a single "authentic" medieval appearance, a then-unusual approach to historic restoration that has since become influential well beyond Verona.
Castelvecchio today functions as both a medieval monument and a case study in modern architectural restoration -- visited as much by architecture students studying Scarpa's work as by visitors drawn to the castle's own Scaliger-era history.