Verona - North and east of the Adige Travel Guides | Verona | Sub Regions | Verona - North and east of the Adige

The sprawling narrow streets of Verona’s left bank are known as Veronetta. This is the area that was controlled by Austria after the city was divided in 1801. It was also the area worst affected by the floods of 1882, which destroyed many of its houses and mills and prompted the filling in of the branch of the river – now commemorated in street names such as piazza Isolo and Interrato dell’Acqua Morta. From San Giorgio in Braida in the north to the Cimitero Monumentale in the south, the area is a lively maze of streets with some of the city’s best small bars and trattorie. Mainly residential, it has noticeably fewer tourists than the centro storico on the right bank, but a few excellent sights, the city’s university and plenty of atmosphere. Behind Veronetta rises the hill of San Pietro, probably the original site of Veronese inhabitation with the Teatro Romano and Castello San Pietro. Behind this are the city walls, beyond which the Colline Veronese rise slowly towards the Alps, with olive groves, villas and vines.

Sights

Teatro Romano and the Museo Archeologico Rigaste Redentore 2, T 045 8000360. Mon 1330-1930, Tue-Sun 0830-1930. Ticket office closes at 1845. E2.60, free first Sun of month. For information on summer music, dance and theatre events T 045 8077201, http://www.estateteatraleveronese.it

Rising all the way up the hill of San Pietro from the river to the temple at its peak and stretching from Ponte Pietra to Ponte Postumia (which no longer exists), Verona’s Roman theatre was the grandest in northern Italy, on completion around the end of the first century BC. Only fragments of its former glory remain today, uncovered from some of the buildings that were constructed on top of it, and partially reconstructed in places after damage by earthquakes and plundering for stone. There is, however, enough to suggest its former greatness, and enough to make it a popular and viable contemporary performance space for a summer season of theatre and music.

The original stage was a three-storey structure running along the riverbank. Behind this, the main semicircular seating area, supported by radial walls, had a diameter of 105 m. Much of this survives, as do some of the radial walls, especially on the southern side of the site where the original structure can easily be seen. Behind this would have been galleries and then three man-made terraces with loggias. The third terrace was the top of the hill, where a temple stood on the current site of Castel San Pietro. The whole structure was over 40 m high. The terraces still exist and are incorporated into the Museo Archeologico.

Much of the credit for the excavations which unearthed the theatre is given to Andrea Manga, whose statue sits among fragments of Roman columns to the north of the seating area. However, enough of the theatre was there in the 16th century for Palladio to make exquisitely detailed architectural drawings of how the theatre must have once looked, reproductions of which are in the Museo Archeologico, together with an architectural model based on his designs.

Near Manga’s statue is a plaque commemorating the first production of Romeo and Juliet in the theatre in the summer of 1948, since when a regular season of theatre, music and dance has taken place.

The city’s Museo Archeologico is spread through the upper part of the theatre, including the former monastery of San Girolamo. The first room has a mosaic of Bacchus with a panther at his feet, and the openings of Roman drains designed to take water away from the theatre. The beautiful 15th- to 16th-century Chiostro dei Gesuati here is home to a varied collection of Roman fragments of funerary monuments and mosaics. Among the most interesting is a cippus (a small column marking a significant place, often a burial site) with a naked eros looking rather sad and leaning on an upturned torch, a symbol of dying. Opposite, on the right as you enter the cloister, is a cylindrical funeral urn topped by a rabbit clasped in the claws of a lion. The convent cells have some pre-Roman finds, including bronze Etruscan devotional offerings from the 6th century BC. Also here is a beautiful female bronze two-faced Roman bust. A large collection of headless Roman statues and body-less Roman heads is less interesting. The Grande Terrazza has a mixture of more funeral monuments and fragments of columns as well as some good views. The most beautiful part of all, the tree-lined Seconda Passegiata, one of the original terraces of the theatre, with stunning views over the city, is only open at weekends and on holidays.

The probable site of the first settlement in the city, then of the Roman Temple which later crowned the hill and later still of the Visconti castle, is now a largely abandoned 19th-century Austrian-built barracks. Plans have been mooted to use the building as exhibition space for some of the city’s museums, but as yet there is no sign of action. It is, nevertheless, one of the city’s most visited attractions, especially at sunset, when lovers stroll up here in order to gaze back down over the city below. The views are spectacular, and even the walk up is pleasant, steps winding up the hillside between houses with occasional glimpses of the Roman theatre to the right.

via San Giovanni in Valle. Mon-Fri 0900-1130, 1700-1830.

A combination of white doves, cacti and some eccentric internal decoration give this the feel of a village church, but the structure itself is impressive, albeit one which has clearly been renovated many times. Fragments of ancient frescoes sit on top of other fragments of even older frescoes. Built in 1120 on top of an existing crypt, the worn tufa is home to six different bells, the history of which is posted outside the entrance. The beautiful crypt is not open to the public, but its shadows can be peered into through iron gates.

vicolo Pozzo 1, T 045 596238. Tue-Fri 0900-1200, 1500-1800. E4.

Closed for restoration at the time of writing but due to reopen in autumn 2003, the African Museum contains a variety of exhibits taken from the Colombian missions. Founded in 1938, clothes, instruments and tools are an insight into African customs, but also into the colonial attitudes of their collectors.

Travel Guides | Verona | Sub Regions | Verona - North and east of the Adige
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