Despite the obviously Gothic windows on its facade, and the incongruous classical campanile, the Duomo of Verona is, at its heart, a Romanesque building.
One of the typically Romanesque features of the facade is the double-decker "protiro" or projecting porch over the main west door. This is in contrast with the doorways on Gothic churches, which are generally set into the main body of the building.
A further characteristically Romanesque feature are the "stilophore" griffons which support the outermost pillars of the porch, and which are usually shown trampling on some other creature or creatures. Here on the right the victims are a pair of oxen - the left-hand griffon has a dragon.
Most of the carvings on the "protiro" are images of saints, or scenes from the Bible, but there are a couple of unusual additions in the form of a pair of "paladins" or Christian Champions - here Oliver and Roland.
On the upper part of the facade, we see hints of the bichromic banding, formed of alternate layers of brick and stone, which covers the south wall of the Duomo.
The entrance in the south wall also has a double-height porch supported on two sets of pillars with ornamented bases and capitals. The upper pillars are supported by a pair of heavily-decorated brackets about two-thirds of the way up from the ground.
On the right-hand side, the lower marble pillar terminates in a capital which supports, but does not quite match, either in material or design, a rather somnolent lion, on whose head rests the upper, porphyry, pillar.
However, the real fun starts with the left-hand bracket, which you can examine in detail: