Travel Guides | Verona Travel Guide
Verona Travel Guide
A night at the opera
With a spectacular 20,000-seat performance space in the very heart of the city, Verona has become justly famous for its summer opera season. Enormous, lavish productions take place every night during the summer months, the audience sitting with candles on the original Roman stone seats of the amphitheatre. Outside of the opera season the Arena is also used for pop concerts. The Roman theatre to the north of the river stages some top-notch theatre productions and there’s a varied musical programme of modern, classical and jazz at other locations around the city. Balancing out Verona’s somewhat staid reputation, the university influences a more youthful and vibrant side to the arts scene, and there’s alternative music and art to be found, too.
Grapes of wealth
Verona is more than just the sum of its arts. The city is an important trade centre and more goods now pass through its venerable old portals than the port of Genoa. Wine is also key to the city’s wealth. The vine carpeted slopes of the Valpolicella and Soave regions rise up on either side of the city, which, not surprisingly, plays host to Vinitaly, the country’s top wine fair. Olives, too, grow in abundance in the fecund hills to the north, east and west, while, to the equally fertile south, beyond a sprawling industrial area, the Po plain is an enormous patchwork of crop-yielding fields.
Renaissance city
The crasser side of Verona’s tourism centres on a bizarrely contrived Romeo and Juliet trail around a series of fictional sites. The city’s real and multi-layered history, meanwhile, is more interesting, and apparent everywhere you turn. From the Romans to Mussolini via an unlikely 4th-century African patron saint, and the great artists and architects of the Renaissance, Verona’s streets, houses, churches and piazzas combine to tell the fascinating story of this small, but hugely significant, northern Italian city.
At a glance
Centro storico
Bordered on three sides by the river Adige, the streets of Verona’s ancient centre follow the layout of the Roman city. Most of the well-known sights are still here, between Ponte Pietra, the bridge which predates the city, in the north, along narrow winding streets and across piazzas to the original Roman gates of Porta Leoni in the south and Porta Borsari in the west. The Roman decumanus maximus (main north-south road) still exists in corso Porta Borsari and corso Sant’Anastasia. It intersects with the cardo maximus at the site of the Roman forum, now piazza Erbe, the beautiful heart of the city and just one of a cluster of wonderful piazzas.
Piazza dei Signori, leading off piazza Erbe, is more refined, and equally beautiful. While the foundations are Roman, much of what sits on top is Gothic, Romanesque and Renaissance and narrow streets of ancient palazzi, many still frescoed, stretch up to the Adige. The Duomo, the city’s cathedral, is just one of many spectacular churches. The stamp of the medieval rulers, the della Scala family, is visible most ostentatiously in their elaborate Gothic tombs. Also here are the city’s main shopping streets, including the shiny pedestrianized via Mazzini, the marble slabs polished by many thousands of feet which travel its length as much for the passegiata (the traditional evening stroll) as for the shops.
South of the centro storico
Heading south and west from the original centro storico, the city opens out across piazza Bra and beyond, stretching along the river as it curves upstream to the west, and down the grand corso Porta Nuova to the station and the industrial area beyond. The city walls were extended to include the vast Arena (the amphitheatre) in the 3rd century AD. Just to the northwest of piazza Bra is Castelvecchio: a castle and bridge providing the city with more of its distinctive icons. Further west, the handsome church of San Zeno is the city’s most admired building.
North and east of the Adige
The steep hill of San Pietro was the original site of settlement in the city. At its base, looking out across the river, sits the Roman theatre, and from its top are fantastic panoramic views over the city. To either side of the hill are residential areas of the old city. Though the sights are well spread out here, there are some atmospheric little districts of winding streets, especially in Veronetta to the south, home to many of the city’s best bars and restaurants. Beyond rise hills of olives and vineyards, with the first signs of the Alps to the north.
Around Verona
To the northwest of the city, Lake Garda is Italy’s biggest and most popular lake. At its wider southern end it is overdeveloped, and a destination for package holidays. Further north, however, high hills enclose it on both sides, increasing its beauty and stifling development. Between the lake and the city is Valpolicella, a hilly wine-growing area. To the north the Parco Naturale Regionale della Lessinia is high and wild enough to make skiing possible in winter and walking popular in summer. It is an area dominated by its stone, whether it be mountainous outcrops, marble quarries, roofs or fenceposts. The Val d’Adige separates Valpolicella and Lessinia from the high ridge Monte Baldo to the west, and Lake Garda beyond. Soave to the east, and the southern plains are more fertile agricultural areas, spotted with villas and villages, many with excellent restaurants, especially around the Mincio river which flows south from the Lake. Further east, Vicenza is a smart town with a centro storico full of the work of the great architect Palladio. Mantova to the south has lakes and a small but perfectly-formed medieval centre. Brescia to the west has a castle, more medieval piazzas and some Roman remains among its fascist and modern architecture.
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