Isaac Koyfman
Google
Another awful example of something fairly typical for Italy: a potentially wonderful experience ruined by lazy and entitled bureaucracy! We specially bought Verona Cards - and arrived at reception by 5:30pm - only to hear that while admission would be free with the card, tickets still needed to be "issued" and, of course, could not be issued at this "late hour" (gallery closes at 6pm, but it's not huge).
Even the crew of bozos at the door - way many more of them than visitors (and no wonder with that attitude) - felt bad and suggested we wait for the "lady in charge". There finally arrived a regular harridan who in extremely poor English pronounced - essentially - that she can't be bothered with such a nuisance as actual visitors to the gallery!, and went on to actual screaming when I tried to find out her name.
We ended up looking at some quite interesting pieces of contemporary art in the lobby (characteristically, the staff couldn't even understand what we were about - state funding pays for a lot of art that no one pays any attention to) and descended to the courtyard of the Palazzo - where, oh so typically, tourists were sitting, eating and drinking on the 15th century marble steps of Scalla della Ragione, right next to the hand-printed sign prohibiting just those things. Naturally, the monster-in-charge could not be bothered protecting the national monument (despite all the "video surveillance"): she was too busy keeping foreign visitors - who paid for entrance through Verona card - from visiting GAM!