The Ancient Saint Mary's church was built in the early middle ages, as confirmed by the founding in the apse a VIII° century mosaic. The actual Romanesque building, a three nave basilica divided by columns with simple and squared capital and three apses, made in the depth of the wall, dates back to the beginning of the XII° century.
The bell tower, Romanesque as well, unusually leans on the major apse. Posterior Baroque transformations were removed on last century's restorations that involved big changes.

In the years that the noble family Della Scala (The Stairs) was lord of Verona, the cemetery was used to bury the Lords "I Signori" that lived nearby.
At first they were buried in simple stone sarcophagus with the stairs symbol and some other linear embossed, then after Cangrande's death in elaborated gothic funerary monuments.
The ancient sarcophaguses without inscriptions, at first were probably located in a cloister adjoining the church. Outside next to the church's side door is placed the ark of Cangrande I°. The Lord of Verona died suddenly in Treviso in the middle of his campaign of conquest.
His grave has become a monument that glorifies his heroic deeds. Just like the ark of Guglielmo di Castelbarco suspended over the entrance portal of the monastery of Saint Anastasia. The deceased is depicted lying on the sarcophagus, supported by heraldic animals (dogs here).
On the front, at the sides of the stone Christ between the Virgin and the Angel Advertiser (added in the nineteenth century), we can observe the reliefs showing the subjection of the cities in Treviso lands, at the top, and their stylized image below.

The pyramid- shaped canopy coverage culminates with the equestrian statue of Can Grande, one of the most appealing sculptures of the Italian Trecento (replaced by a copy in 1910: the original is kept in the Museum of Castelvecchio). The mausoleum Mastino II commissioned while he was alive , as after also Cansignorio did, has been disconnected from the church and surrounded by a fence that encloses the cemetery area.
The fence was decorated with the symbol of the stairs between the pillars topped by statues of allegorical virtues (now kept into Castelvechio). On the side face of the sarcophagus are represented God sided by St. Paul and St. George which present Mastino to the Lord. On the top, four angels holding a torch are watching over the deceased.
In the tympanum of the canopy, high reliefs from the Genesis, connected to the central image decoration of the tree: The original sin, the work of their ancestors, Cain kills Abel, Noah's Drunkenness. Here too the cusp ends with the equestrian statue of the Lord in arms (replaced with a copy in 1992).

The Ark of Cansignorio, unlike the previous two, was created by an anonymous workshop in Verona, and signed by the Lombard sculptor Bonino da Campione.
The appearance of an elaborated Gothic reliquary, which relates it to the ark of the Mastino, is accentuated by the dense forest of niches, gables, pinnacles, collocated around the six-sided canopy. Above the gate, niches with statues of warrior saints around the sarcophagus reliefs with scenes from the life of Christ, Cansignorio introduced by St. George to the Virgin and the Virgin Incoronation.

The spire has the statue on a horse that stands on a plinth, with the figures of the Apostles surrounded by gables with Virtues in niches with lobed crest and angels. Behind the church was laid in 1831 the beautiful hanging area roof, Venetian-style, with statues in niches, by Giovanni della Scala, removed from the church of San Fermo al Ponte (at the Bridge).

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