Three days in Verona: the balcony is fake and the amphitheatre still sells out
Two nights inside the river bend, with a Roman arena that puts on opera in July, a Romanesque basilica most people never walk to, and a garden on the hill for the last morning.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Verona
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
Verona is the compromise everybody eventually finds: an hour from Venice and an hour from Milan, a fraction of the crowds of either, and a historic centre wrapped in a loop of river that you can cross on foot in twenty minutes.
It is built out of a local pink limestone, which gives the whole place a warm, slightly unreal colour in late light. It was a Roman city of some importance, then the seat of a family of medieval warlords who left castles and tombs everywhere, then Austrian for half a century, and all three layers are still visible from any given square.
Two nights is enough, three would not be wasted, and one is the mistake people make on the way to somewhere else.
Highlights
- A first century amphitheatre that has been in continuous use for two thousand years and hosts opera every summer
- Bronze door panels from the twelfth century telling Bible stories to people who could not read
- A castle museum rebuilt in the 1960s in a way architects still make pilgrimages to see
- A Renaissance garden of cypresses and grottoes with the city laid out below it
Where to stay
Verona, two nights
A Roman colony on a bend of the Adige, at the point where the road from Germany came down out of the Alps and met the road across the plain. That position made it rich, fought over, and fortified by every ruler it ever had.
The medieval city belonged to the Scaligeri, who built the castle, the bridge, and a set of tombs suspended in wrought iron above a churchyard in the middle of town. After them came Venice, then Austria, then Italy, and none of them knocked much down.
Day by day
Day 1 in Verona
The arena, the old forum, and the balcony
Come out of the station and walk in, and the first thing you meet is a Roman amphitheatre standing in the middle of a large paved square with cafés around it. It is the third largest to survive and by far the most used: gladiators, then a quarry, then a bullring, then bear-baiting, and since 1913 an opera house.
North of it, along the shopping street, is the old Roman forum, still the market square and still the centre of everything, with a fountain in the middle carrying a Roman statue with a medieval head.
Between the two is the courtyard everybody photographs. Be warned: the balcony was bolted onto a fourteenth century house in the 1930s to give visitors something to look at, the family the house belonged to were called Cappello rather than Capulet, and Shakespeare never went anywhere near Italy. Go anyway, for the sheer strangeness of several hundred people queueing to touch a bronze statue.
- 15:30
Arena
HistoricFirst century, pink limestone, and still working. The outer ring mostly fell in an earthquake, which is why the wall you see from the square is the inner one. Go in if there is no performance being built, or come back at night for the show.
- 17:15
Casa di Giulietta
HistoricA courtyard, a bronze statue rubbed shiny in one particular place, and walls covered in graffiti and chewing gum by people declaring love. Free to look at from the gate; the house and balcony cost money and take four minutes.
- 18:15
Piazza delle Erbe
ArchitectureThe Roman forum, now a market of umbrellas and souvenir stalls surrounded by frescoed house fronts. The painted facades are the thing: Verona was covered in them once, and a few blocks have kept theirs.
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- 19:30
Aperitivo under the arches
EatA glass of Valpolicella and something salty, at six, on the square. Then eat late in one of the old wine bars in the lanes behind it, where the tables are shared and the paper is the menu.
With more time: The tower on the corner of the square has a lift for most of the way and stairs for the rest, and it is the only place you can see how tightly the river wraps around the city.
Day 2 in Verona
San Zeno, the castle and the Gothic churches
Start with the walk west that most visitors never make. Twenty minutes along the river is a Romanesque basilica with a rose window, a striped stone front, and forty-eight bronze panels on the doors, cast in the twelfth century and cut with a directness that makes the later art in the city look overworked. Inside, Mantegna's altarpiece sits where he put it.
Walk back along the water to the red brick castle the medieval lords built to keep their own citizens out as much as anybody else. Its museum is famous among architects: an Italian architect stripped the fake medieval restoration off in the 1960s and left the joins showing, so you see the Roman wall, the medieval castle and the modern intervention as three separate things.
The afternoon goes east, to the largest Gothic church in the city, for one small fresco of a knight, a princess and a dragon, tucked high above a chapel and easy to miss.
- 09:30
Basilica of St Zeno
ReligiousDedicated to a fourth century North African bishop who became the city's patron and whose body is in the crypt. The bronze doors are the reason to come, and the tall bare nave is the second reason.
- 11:30
Castelvecchio
HistoricFourteenth century, red brick, with its own fortified bridge across the river that was blown up in 1945 and rebuilt from the stones dredged out of the water. The art inside is good and the building is better.
- 13:30
Lunch off the main street
EatOne street back from the shopping route the prices drop by a third. Risotto all'Amarone if it is on, which stains everything purple and is worth it.
- 15:00
Chiesa di Sant'Anastasia
ReligiousTall, brick and Gothic, with two crouching stone figures carrying the holy water basins near the door that the city has nicknamed the hunchbacks. Pay the extra to go up to the Pellegrini chapel for the Pisanello fresco.
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With more time: The cathedral is five minutes further north, past the medieval tombs of the Scaligeri hanging in their iron cage, and holds a Titian Assumption in the first chapel on the left.
Day 3 in Verona
Across the river, and the garden on the hill
The last morning is on the far bank, which is where the Romans put the theatre and where the hill starts. Cross by the oldest bridge in the city, which is Roman at the base, and turn right for the garden.
It was laid out in the sixteenth century, and it is a formal parterre at the bottom that turns into a wild terraced hillside above, with cypresses, a grotto and a stone mask cut into the rock face. Goethe came here and so has everybody else with any sense since.
From the top of the garden a path and a set of steps run up to the old fort on the ridge, which is the view of Verona: the river, the roofs and the arena in the middle of them. Then walk down and get the train.
- 09:30
Giardino Giusti
NatureA Renaissance garden that has kept its plan for four hundred years, with a hedge maze at the bottom and a hillside of cypress above. Go early and you may have it to yourself.
- 11:30
Castel San Pietro
HistoricAn Austrian barracks on a Roman and medieval site, closed to the public, with a terrace in front of it that is the best free view in the city. A funicular runs up from the river if the steps are too much.
- 12:45
Last lunch, then Porta Nuova
EatEat on the quiet bank by the Roman theatre, then twenty minutes back across the river and down to the station.
With more time: The Roman theatre at the bottom of the hill is a separate site from the amphitheatre, cut into the slope, and still used for a summer season of Shakespeare, which in this city is either perfect or too much.
Before you go
Where to stay
Inside the river loop, which is small, and preferably north of the main shopping street where the streets go quiet. Anything within ten minutes of Piazza delle Erbe covers everything here on foot.
The station is a fifteen minute walk or a short bus from the centre, and Verona is a good base for the lake and the wine country if you want more than a city break. In opera season rooms are expensive and booked out months ahead, which is worth knowing before you pick your dates.
Getting around
Entirely on foot. The old centre is about a kilometre across, mostly pedestrianised, and flat until you cross the river and start climbing.
Verona sits on the main east-west line, so Venice, Milan and Bologna are all around an hour and a quarter away, and the fast trains to the Brenner pass and Austria stop here too. There is no metro and you will not need one.
The opera season, and tickets
From roughly mid June to early September the Roman amphitheatre stages large-scale opera at night, on a stage that can take a full-size Egyptian temple. It is not a purist's evening: it is fifteen thousand people, half of them on the stone steps with a cushion and a picnic, and the acoustics are natural. The cheap stone seats are the ones to buy, and they go on sale months ahead.
Otherwise, book nothing. A combined card covers the churches, which charge a small entry fee each, and pays for itself if you visit three of them. Most museums here close on Monday mornings, and several of the churches shut between one and half past one.
Eating and drinking
This is Amarone country. The wine is made from grapes left to dry on racks for months before pressing, which concentrates everything and produces something closer to port in weight than to ordinary red. It is expensive, it is worth one glass, and the everyday Valpolicella from the same hills is what people actually drink.
The food is northern and unshowy: risotto cooked in red wine until it turns purple, boiled meats with a green sauce, gnocchi and horse. Bars do a proper aperitivo from six, and the ones under the arches on the main square charge for the view.
Verona is the rare Italian city that is neither undiscovered nor overwhelmed. There are crowds, but they are in two places and both are avoidable by walking three hundred metres in any direction.
Do the west bank in the morning, the hill on the last day, and drink the local wine rather than the famous one.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Juliet's house worth it?
- As a curiosity, yes, and it takes four minutes from the gate. The balcony is a 1930s addition, the connection to Shakespeare is invented, and the courtyard is packed all day. Understanding all that and going anyway is the right approach; the small museum inside is skippable.
- Is three days enough?
- Two nights covers the city comfortably at a walking pace. A third night is worth it if you want a day in the Valpolicella hills or on Lake Garda, both about half an hour away, or if you are coming for an opera and do not want to travel the next morning.
- How do I do the opera without spending a fortune?
- Buy an unreserved stone step seat, arrive early to get a place with a backrest, and take a cushion, which they also sell at the gate. Bring a jumper: the stone gives up its heat by midnight and the operas are long.
- Verona or Padua?
- Verona if you want a city to walk around, a Roman amphitheatre and wine country on the doorstep. Padua if you want the Giotto chapel, which is one of the great things in Italy and takes a booked slot. Both are easy from Venice and the two together make a good four days.
- When should I come?
- May, June or September. Opera season fills July and August and pushes prices up, and the plain gets genuinely hot. Winter is quiet, cold and cheap, with a Christmas market in the main square and a comet-shaped light sculpture coming out of the amphitheatre.