Book Verona tours & attraction tickets

Few Italian cities carry their mythology as lightly as Verona. The Roman amphitheatre that anchors Piazza Bra is not a ruin in any diminished sense; it is one of the best-preserved arenas in the world, still drawing tens of thousands of people each summer for open-air opera performances that have been staged there since 1913. That continuity, ancient stone put to living use, tells you something essential about how Verona works. History here is not cordoned off behind glass.

The city sits at a bend in the Adige river in the Veneto, roughly equidistant between Venice and Milan, and its compact historic centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, rewards the kind of slow, unhurried walking that reveals layers. Piazza delle Erbe, built over the old Roman forum, is ringed by frescoed palazzi and a medieval fountain. A short walk north brings you to Piazza dei Signori, quieter and more austere, presided over by a statue of Dante, who spent time in Verona as a guest of the Scaligeri lords. The Dante in Verona walking tour that traces his journey from Inferno to Paradise through the city's streets is one of the more intellectually satisfying ways to move through the centre, connecting the literary and the architectural in a way that a self-guided wander rarely manages.