Arcole
Arcole lies in the Bassa Veronese, the plain east of Verona crossed by the Alpone river, and is inseparably linked to one of the m...
Updated 12 July 2026 · Sources: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battaglia_del_ponte_di_Arcole · https://www.napoleon-empire.org/en/battles/arcole.php · https://www.quattrocalici.it/denominazioni/arcole-doc/
The story
The story of Arcole
The Alpone plain
The municipality lies in the Bassa Veronese, east of Verona, crossed by the Alpone river, which flows down from the Val d'Alpone hills before joining the Adige a little further south. This stretch of plain, with its watercourses and the partly marshy areas that once characterised it, was in 1796 the scene of one of the best-known clashes of the Napoleonic wars in Italy, fought precisely on territory that at the time belonged to the Republic of Venice.
The Battle of Arcole Bridge
On the night between 14 and 15 November 1796, Napoleon marched with around eighteen thousand men toward Ronco on the Adige, where French military engineers set up a pontoon bridge that allowed the troops to reach the marshes on the river's northern bank. In the following days, fierce fighting took place for control of the bridge over the Alpone near Arcole, with the aim of preventing the Austrian forces of General Alvinczy from reuniting with those of General Davidovich, a link-up that could have allowed the relief of besieged Mantua, then under French siege.
The Napoleon episode and the outcome of the battle
Among the most remembered episodes of the battle is Napoleon's attempt to personally lead the assault on the bridge, tricolour flag in hand, an action that did not succeed immediately and saw the general himself fall into a ditch, from which he was rescued by his aides-de-camp. After three days of fighting, which cost the French around four thousand five hundred casualties, Napoleon's army succeeded in definitively halting the Austrian attempt to reunite its forces, forcing Alvinczy to retreat toward Trento with even heavier losses and to abandon the plan to relieve Mantua.
The 1810 obelisk
In memory of the French victory, an obelisk was erected in 1810 at the foot of the Arcole bridge, on the right bank of the Alpone. The monument is today considered the only one still standing in Italy dedicated to a Napoleonic victory, and it represents the main physical testimony to an event that, though confined to a small municipality in the Bassa Veronese, carried significant weight in late eighteenth-century European military history.
The village today and the Arcole DOC designation
Beyond its Napoleonic memory, Arcole is today a farming municipality in the Bassa Veronese, whose territory gives its name to the Arcole controlled designation of origin, recognised in 2000 and spread across a wide area between the provinces of Verona and Vicenza. The sandy silt soil and continental climate, with hot summers and cold winters, give the wines of this area recognisable characteristics, in a wine-growing context less well known than the Verona hills but rooted in the local agricultural tradition.
Experiences not to miss
- Visitare l'obelisco del 1810 sulla riva destra dell'Alpone, unico monumento napoleonico rimasto in Italia
- Visit the 1810 obelisk on the right bank of the Alpone, the only Napoleonic monument still standing in Italy
To see
What to see in Arcole
Routes · Trovido Route
Routes in Arcole
Jobs · JobFlow
