Oratorio di San Rocco

The ancient church of San Rocco, located in Villafranca di Verona, at the beginning of the main road of the village for those coming from Verona with the Scaliger castle in the background, is a splendid artistic testimony dating back to the second half of the fifteenth century.

There is no certain information about the construction date of the little church, but it is hypothesized that it was built between 1485 and 1511 as a votive offering following an epidemic of plague that struck the Veronese countryside.

Simeoni, in his historical-artistic guide of the city and province from 1909, dates the Oratory to the end of the 1400s, but it is not unlikely that it was built a few decades later, during the plague of 1511.

The only documents in which the church is mentioned are the pastoral visits: one in 1525 carried out by the vicar of Bishop Matteo Giberti to the parish of Villafranca and the subsequent one in 1532 in which the church is described as “fairly decorated and owned by the municipality and the men of Villafranca.”

(source: villafrancadiverona.org)