Between the Cathedral, the Ducal Palace and the Palazzo della Ragione, in 1452 a column was placed surmounted by the statue of Duke Borso on the throne. A few years later it was moved to one side of the entrance to the ducal courtyard (now Piazza Municipale), to hold the Arch of the Horse, where, on the other side, another column was already placed with the equestrian statue of Marquis Niccolò III, Borso's father.

The column consists of layers of pink Verona marble and white Istrian stone, formed by ancient broken and treated tombstones from Jewish cemeteries. In 1716 a fire forced the rebuilding of the column for which tombstones from Israelite cemeteries were used: during the worst periods of closure in the ghettos and persecution of the Jews, in fact, not even the cemeteries were spared and became marble quarries. The episode, reported by the chronicler Nicolò Baruffaldi, a direct witness of the events, was then forgotten. When the column was disassembled for restoration in 1960, the truth was revealed. Despite the request for restitution from the Jewish community, which offered to remake the column at their own expense, the stones were chiselled, polished and walled forever. Only photographic evidence remains.

"Year 1718 ... On 24 November by order of the Marquis Francesco Sacrati, Judge de’ Savi, many burial marbles were removed from the two cemeteries of the Jews, to use them to raise the column of Duke Borso in the square, but paying the wholesale value to the Massari del Ghetto ...", adding that in 1719 "on 16 March the column of Duke Borso, already cracked due to the fire that occurred in December 1716, was completed".