Verona, Italy

Evergreen city guide with quick facts, travel, business, and culture.

ItalyVeneto

Overview

Verona is usually given half a day between Venice and Milan for the sake of a balcony that has nothing to do with Shakespeare. The city deserves better: the arena still stages opera, and the wine hills start ten minutes out.

The Arena & Opera

A first-century amphitheatre still in working use, with summer opera staged on the original stone tiers.

UNESCO Old Centre

Piazza delle Erbe on the Roman forum, the Scaliger tombs, Castelvecchio and gates standing mid-street.

Valpolicella & Soave

Amarone cellars in the terraced hills north of the city, and the white-wine hill town of Soave to the east.

Lake Garda

Sirmione's peninsula castle and Roman villa, Peschiera, and ferries between the southern lakeside towns.

Culture

Veronese cooking is northern and unhurried: risotto all'Amarone stained deep red with the local wine, pastissada de caval, bigoli pasta with duck or anchovy, and polenta as a default rather than an afterthought. Monte Veronese cheese comes from the hills above the city. The wines are the point — Amarone and Valpolicella from the north, Soave from the east, Bardolino from the Garda shore — and osterie in the old centre pour them by the glass with cicheti-style snacks in the early evening. Festivals: The summer opera season inside the Arena, Vinitaly wine fair, in spring, Roman theatre summer season, across the river, Christmas market on Piazza Bra. Museums: Castelvecchio Museum, Archaeological Museum at the Roman Theatre, Arena di Verona, Palazzo della Ragione art gallery.

Practical Info

Safety: Verona is a comfortable, low-crime city and ordinary care is enough — the usual attention to bags around the station, the crowded balcony courtyard and the arena entrances on performance nights. The practical hazards are mundane: the restricted-traffic zones catch drivers who follow a satnav into the centre and produce fines months afterwards, and the arena's stone tiers get genuinely hot in the afternoon and hard by the third act, so take a cushion and water to an evening performance. Language: Italian; English is common around Piazza Bra, the arena and the main hotels, and thinner in neighbourhood osterie and across the river in Veronetta. Currency: The euro. Cards are accepted widely, though some small osterie and market stalls still prefer cash for modest amounts.
Travel Overview

Verona's reputation rests on a courtyard balcony that was added to a medieval house in the twentieth century and connects to Shakespeare only through the play, which is a strange fate for one of the best-preserved Roman and medieval cities in northern Italy. The arena on Piazza Bra is the point: a first-century amphitheatre, smaller than Rome's but far more intact, and — unusually for a Roman monument anywhere — still in working use, staging a summer opera season where audiences sit on the original stone steps with cushions and candles. Around it, the centre is UNESCO-listed and compact enough to walk in a morning: Piazza delle Erbe on the footprint of the Roman forum, still a market square; the Scaliger tombs; Castelvecchio's fortress and its bridge over the Adige, which loops around the old town; and Roman gates standing in the middle of ordinary streets. The river is the other organising feature — cross it and climb to the Roman theatre and the castle terrace above for the view back over the tiled roofs. What most day visitors miss is that Verona is also the practical base for two things beyond the city: the Valpolicella hills begin immediately north, which is where Amarone comes from and where the cellars receive visitors, and Lake Garda's southern shore is half an hour away. Spring and autumn are the best seasons; the opera runs through the summer heat, which is when the city is busiest and most expensive.

Discover Verona

The amphitheatre on Piazza Bra dates from the first century and survives in far better condition than most, having been repaired and reused continuously rather than quarried for stone. It seats a substantial audience and still works as a venue: the summer opera season puts full stagings inside it, with much of the audience on the original stone tiers. Even outside the season the interior is worth entering to stand on the arena floor and look up. If you come for a performance, take a cushion — the stone steps are exactly as hard as they look — and expect a late finish.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, though a day covers the centre. What a second day buys is the part most visitors never see: the Valpolicella cellars ten minutes north, the Roman theatre and castle terrace across the river, and Lake Garda's southern shore half an hour away. Verona also works better as a regional base than Venice does — it sits on the main line, it is cheaper to sleep in, and Venice, Milan and Bologna are all easy day trips from it. The city rewards a slower pace than the Venice-Milan itinerary usually allows.

Be clear about what it is first: the house is genuinely medieval, but the balcony was added in the twentieth century and the connection to Shakespeare's characters is a later attribution rather than a historical fact — the play was written by someone who never came here. The courtyard is small, extremely crowded and covered in graffiti and padlocks. Plenty of visitors enjoy it anyway; others look up from the street for nothing and spend the time on the arena or across the river. Either is fine, but knowing beforehand prevents the usual disappointment.

The season runs through the summer, and productions are staged inside the first-century amphitheatre with much of the audience seated on the original stone tiers. Book ahead, because popular nights sell out. The practical advice matters more than the ticket class: take a cushion, since the stone is exactly as unforgiving as it looks, bring water, and expect a late finish — performances start after dark and run long. Numbered seats in the lower sections cost considerably more than the unreserved stone steps, which are the traditional way to attend.

Diplomatic missions in Verona

1 embassy based in this city, grouped by region.