Things to do
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Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore
The best Romanesque church in northern Italy, with bronze door panels cast between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries and a Mantegna altarpiece. The crypt is where Shakespeare had Romeo and Juliet married.
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Teatro Romano
A first-century BC theatre on the far bank, cut into the hillside and still staging Shakespeare each summer. The archaeological museum above it is in a former monastery.
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Verona Arena
A Roman amphitheatre of about 30 AD, smaller than the Colosseum but far more intact, and still in use: the summer opera festival seats around fifteen thousand on the original stone steps.
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Castelvecchio
A fourteenth-century Scaligeri fortress rebuilt as a museum by Carlo Scarpa between 1958 and 1974, and the conversion is as much the reason to come as the collection. Its fortified bridge crosses the Adige.
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Giardino Giusti
A Renaissance garden of 1580 rising from formal parterres to a wooded cliff, with cypresses Goethe wrote about. The belvedere at the top looks back over the whole city.
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Piazza delle Erbe
The old Roman forum, still a market square, ringed by frescoed houses and the Mazzanti buildings. The Torre dei Lamberti on its corner has a lift most of the way up.