Castel San Pietro was the palace of the Langobard kings in Verona and the place where in the first months of 572 King Alboino was killed who “to the great dismay and lament of the Langobards was buried underneath a stairway that was close to the palace” as the chronicler Paolo Diacono recounts. Thanks to his testimony the tomb of Alboino was discovered in the cellar of a house, a small distance from the palace. The king was assassinated by Peredeo on the instruction of Elmichi who represented the Gepids that Alboino had subjugated. His beautiful wife Rosamund was also one of the Gepids. She also favoured the assassination of her husband (dressing as a maid and committing adultery with Peredeo in order to make him agree to the murder) to take revenge on the fact that Alboino had forced her to drink from the skull of her father Cunimondo whom he had captured and killed.

Before the arrival of the Langobards the city had become a bulwark of the Ostrogoths, commanded by the legendary King Theodoric. One morning, the King who was now old after a lifetime of conquests was bathing in the waters of the Adige when he saw a wonderful deer with golden antlers and silver hooves. The old sovereign quickly forgot the ailments of old age and entertaining the idea of following the animal tracks he ordered that weapons and a horse were brought to him. The king mounted a steed “black as an old crow with coal in its eyes”, and it did not take him long to realise that the horse did not want to stop and all was lost. The horse was the devil, come to take his soul which was heavy with the innocent blood of thousands of Christians. After a night of the mad horse ride during which he had crossed the whole of Italy, horse and knight plunged into the smoking crater of Lipari as recounted in the bas-relief sculptures of San Zeno Maggiore Basilica and in a famous carme by Giosuè Carducci.