Verona’s Roman sights, like those from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, are part of this northern Italian city’s daily life, not roped-off museums of some long-forgotten time. Visitors can watch shows in the first-century area, walk through Roman gates, even follow with their fingers the grooves made in the paving stones by ancient chariot wheels.
Roman Relics Discovered
Whenever any new construction requires digging, more relics of Verona’s Roman history emerge from under its streets. The foundations of a massive Roman gate, Porta Leoni, was unearthed under Via Leoni (Via Cappello leads there from Piazza Erbe), and left exposed to show the stonework. A diagram of the whole gate is on the wall above, and behind it is one complete arch of the original gate, which had been covered by the wall of a later building. Porta Leoni was an entrance through the original Roman walls that enclosed the core of the city.
Not everything was covered. At the center of Piazza Erbe, the busy market square, a statue of a Roman goddess was used as a stand-in for the Virgin Mary, and is now known as La Madonna de Verona.
Roman Porta BorsariA few blocks away, where Corso Porta Borsari meets Via Diaz, the imposing multi-tiered Roman Porta dei Borsari spans the street, as it has since the first century AD. A third Roman arch overlooks the river on Corso Cavour. The Gavi Arch, a first-century Roman gate, stood elsewhere originally, but was disassembled and was reconstructed here in the 1930s. Under it are the original paving stones, complete with the grooves made by chariot wheels passing through the gate.
Verona's Roman Arena
The star of Verona’s Roman collection is the First-century Arena, far better preserved than Rome’s Coliseum. Visitors can explore its giant vaulted interior and climb to the top for the full impact of its grandeur. It has been part of the city’s history for 2000 years, first as a stage for gladiator combat, later providing shelter from barbarian invasions and -- since 1913 – as the venue for one of Europe’s most famous summer opera festivals, the Stagione Lyrico di Verona. When the opera is not filling it with music, other concerts of all kinds are.
Roman Sites Across the Adige River
Across Ponte Pietra, a stone bridge first built by the Romans, but destroyed by floods and by the retreating German army in 1945, is more Roman Verona. The bridge’s two arches on the far side of the river are all that’s left of the original Roman construction, rebuilt exactly as it was, from the stones the Veronese had carefully salvaged from the river in 1945.
Overlooking the bridge is Teatro Romano, where Romans watched performances. Its stone seats were built into the natural curve of the hillside, but in the intervening centuries the hillside was built over with shops and homes. No trace of the theatre remained by 1830, when a Veronese merchant bought the land and buildings and began uncovering the amphitheatre. Now in use again, it is the scene of a summer Shakespeare festival, ballet and jazz concerts.
Smaller Roman treasures -- statues, reliefs, columns, mosaics, bronzes, pottery and glass -- that have been unearthed are displayed in a former monastery above Teatro Romano, at the small Museo Archaeologico (Archeological Museum). Stones retrieved from ruins and excavations of Roman Verona and displayed at the Museo Lapidario Maffeiano opposite the Arena on Piazza Bra give just a clue of what the city must have looked like 2000 years ago.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
