Verona is inextricably linked with the river Adige whose wide meanders take in the whole city and offer the visitor incomparable views and perspectives.  Before its banks were tamed, terrible floods wreaked havoc and destruction on the palaces, churches and monasteries close to its shores. One of the areas that suffered most was on the right bank, a little upstream of the Scaligeri castle:

REGASTE SAN ZENO. In October 1492 a terrible flood destroyed the great Benedictine monastery of  San Giovanni Alla Beverara, or St. John’s at the watering place, so-called because there stood a great irrigation wheel for the monastery’s vegetable gardens. Only the innermost part of the building survived, consisting of living quarters and service rooms such as, probably, a refectory in the form of a large hall with a barrel-vaulted brick roof supported centrally by a late Roman column. The monastery was never rebuilt and what remains today, at the ground floor,  is the oldest part of the 

RESIDENCE SAN ZENO, the LUXURY RESIDENTIAL HOTEL  extending around a large courtyard…