5 Days in Verona

Verona's best first impression is also its biggest. You walk into Piazza Bra, the largest square in town, and the Arena is simply there: a ring of red Veronese limestone arches that dates from the 1st century AD, though scholars still argue about the decade. It's one of the best-preserved Roman amphitheaters in the world. Most of the outer ring is gone, taken down for city walls and shaken down by earthquakes, including the big one of 1117. Only four arches survive, the Ala ("wing"), which is why the inside looks more complete than the outside.

Buy a ticket and climb up. In Roman times the Arena probably held around 30,000 people, and the 2026 opera festival drew 416,600 spectators over 51 nights. It also hosted the closing ceremony of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and the opening of the Paralympics. The Olympic legacy is meant to be a lift to the steps from arch 67, still awaited in September, and a museum of the monument.

On the way out, step into the Museo Lapidario Maffeiano at Piazza Bra 28, a small collection of Roman inscriptions and one of the oldest public museums in Europe.

Walk up Via Mazzini, the shopping street that links Piazza Bra to the old center, and turn into Via Cappello. Number 23 is Juliet's House, and you should know what it is. It's a medieval tower-house first mentioned in 1351 as an inn owned by the heirs of Antonio Cappello, with a hat (cappello) carved on a keystone. In the 18th and 19th centuries, people hunting for the Capulets of Shakespeare's story matched that hat to the Capelletti family, and the house got its name. The city bought it in 1905, and in 1939 the museum director Antonio Avena dressed it up in neo-medieval style. The balcony is a 14th-century slab from a Scaliger palace with two marble brackets added for the purpose, and the bronze Juliet below dates from 1973.

So it's a tourist construct, a good one. Since April 2026 you enter by a timed slot through the foyer of the Teatro Nuovo. A 5 EUR ticket covers the courtyard, and 12 EUR adds the rooms, where the bed was built for Franco Zeffirelli's film. For most people the courtyard is plenty.

The trattoria is on Vicolo Regina d'Ungheria, a few steps from Juliet's balcony, which is why you should book. It started in the first half of the 20th century as an osteria run by a retired firefighter (pompiere), and it looks it: wood paneling, wine bottles, cured meats and cheeses hanging on the walls and old photographs. The Michelin Guide lists it for classic Veneto cooking.

Start with a plate of local cured meats and cheeses, then order a dish made with Verona's own wine: risotto all'Amarone, or beef cheek braised in Amarone.

From the trattoria it's a two-minute walk to Piazza delle Erbe, Verona's oldest square and the place where the Roman forum stood. Its market has been running ever since. Today the stalls sell more souvenirs than vegetables, but the buildings around the square are the draw.

Look for the fountain of Madonna Verona, a statue of Roman origin on a Roman basin, put here by Cansignorio della Scala in the 14th century. The column with the winged lion of St Mark marks the centuries when Verona belonged to Venice. The Domus Mercatorum was the merchants' hall, the frescoed Case Mazzanti line one side, and the 17th-century Palazzo Maffei closes the northwest end. Have your coffee a block away: the cafés on the square charge for the view.

Climb the Lamberti Tower in the late afternoon, when the light on the roofs is best. It stands 84 meters high, was begun in 1172, was hit by lightning in 1403 and rebuilt between 1448 and 1463, and the two-tone stonework shows where the old tower ends and the new one begins. Its bells had jobs: the Marangona rang the working hours, the Rengo called citizens to arms.

Take the 289 steps, or the glass lift. From the terrace the bend of the Adige, the Arena, the hills and the roofs of Piazza delle Erbe sit below you. It's the best view in Verona for the money.

The reason half the world knows the Arena is the opera season, which has run almost without a break since Aida in 1913. In 2026 it ran from 5 June to 12 September, 51 evenings, the longest season ever, and the 2027 calendar is already on sale, from Aida on 12 June to the last evening on 11 September. Performances begin between about 9pm and 9:30pm, and the cheapest seats are on the ancient stone steps (25 EUR for an opera in 2026, 22 EUR for a gala), where you'll want a cushion.

Outside the season there is no opera in the Arena. Check the programme of the Teatro Filarmonico, a short walk from Piazza Bra, or do this evening the way day five ends: an aperitivo on the Liston facing the floodlit Arena, then a late dinner.

Walk through the arch from Piazza delle Erbe into Piazza dei Signori, the square the Scaligers built their palaces around. Dante's statue stands in the middle. He was a friend of Cangrande I della Scala, who protected him, and dedicated the Paradiso to him in a letter attributed to Dante. Around the square are the Palazzo della Ragione with its red marble staircase, the palace of Cansignorio, the Palazzo del Podestà and the Loggia del Consiglio.

Cangrande ruled Verona from 1311 to 1329, the family's peak, and his tomb is two minutes away, beside the little Romanesque church of Santa Maria Antica. The Scaliger Tombs are five Gothic monuments in a walled court, behind an iron grille worked with the family emblem, a ladder (scala). Cangrande's sarcophagus sits above the church door. You can see most of it through the grille, so pay only if you want a closer look.

Five minutes north is the largest church in Verona. The Dominicans settled here around 1290, with the support of the Scaligers, and built a Gothic basilica dedicated to St Peter the Martyr, a Veronese Dominican and patron of the city alongside Zeno. Twelve red Veronese marble pillars hold up the three aisles.

Look for the holy-water stoups known as the gobbi (hunchbacks), and for Pisanello's fresco of Saint George and the Princess. The Giusti chapel left of the transept has a fine marble doorway.

The Cathedral is five minutes up the street, and it's less a church than a complex. It was rebuilt in Romanesque style after the 1117 earthquake and consecrated on 13 September 1187. Two Romanesque porches hold the entrance. Beside it are the baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, the cloister of the canons and the church of Sant'Elena, under which you can see the remains of the mosaic floors of two early Christian basilicas, the first of them consecrated by Saint Zeno himself in the 4th century.

Walk down behind the apses of Sant'Anastasia and you're on Via Sottoriva, a narrow street that runs along the river bank, sotto riva in Veronese, and takes its name from it. A line of mills once stood on the Adige here, and the street flooded before the river walls were built. Today it's the street of osterie.

This is the place for the plain Veronese lunch: bigoli (thick wholewheat spaghetti) with duck, potato gnocchi, or a risotto, and a glass of Valpolicella. Look for the places where Italians sit down and the menu is short. In autumn and winter, ask whether there's lesso e pearà (boiled meats with a peppery bread sauce), because it's a Verona classic.

Ponte Pietra is the oldest bridge in Verona and the only one that dates from Roman times, though less of it is Roman than it looks. The two arches on the far bank are original. The one nearest the city was rebuilt in 1298 by Alberto I della Scala, and on 24 April 1945 retreating German troops blew up the rest, along with every other bridge in town. The city fished the stones out of the river and put them back; Ponte Pietra was finished in 1957.

Cross it and you're at the Roman Theatre, built at the end of the 1st century BC into the foot of the hill. It's still a theater: a summer festival has run here without a break since 1948. The archaeological museum is part of the visit and holds finds from Roman Verona, including statues from the Arena. The theater was designed as one stage set with the hill behind it, so go up through the terraces.

Take the funicular next to the theater, a one-minute ride reopened in 2017, up the Colle San Pietro. The hill has been fortified since Roman times, and the "castle" you see is an Austrian barracks of 1852-58, built on the remains of a castle that Gian Galeazzo Visconti raised in 1393.

The point is the terrace. In front of you the Adige curls around the old town, Ponte Pietra sits right below and the towers and domes of the center run out to the Arena. Stay until the lights come on.

Start at the Roman gate. Porta Borsari was the main entrance to Roman Verona, where the Via Postumia ran into the city's main street. It was begun in the second half of the 1st century BC, and the part you see dates from the first half of the 1st century AD. Travelers were stopped and checked in a courtyard inside the gate, between two tall towers.

On the city side Corso Porta Borsari runs to Piazza delle Erbe along the Roman main street. On the other side, Corso Cavour runs straight to Castelvecchio along the line of the Via Postumia, with a palace on every block. Walk it.

Castelvecchio was built in 1354-56 by Cangrande II della Scala as the fortress of the Scaliger dynasty, with seven towers and walls of red brick, and for centuries it was a barracks. The French lowered its towers in the early 1800s. It opened as a museum in 1926, and from 1958 to 1974 the architect Carlo Scarpa redesigned the whole thing.

What Scarpa did is the thing to look at. He treated the restoration of the building and the display of the collection as one design, so old walls, new openings and the works themselves are all part of one walk. The collection is serious: medieval sculpture, Italian and foreign painting, arms, ceramics, and the old bells of the city. A themed route until 10 January 2027 follows the equestrian statue of Cangrande I from the museum's 1926 display to Scarpa's version. Check the exhibition list too: one on Titian's Venus from the Prado opens on 31 October.

Walk through the castle and out across the Ponte Scaligero, the bridge Cangrande II built at the same time so that he could escape to Tyrol if the city rose against him. For centuries only soldiers used it. It was blown up on 24 April 1945 by the retreating Germans and rebuilt in 1951 from the old plan, and the red brick and the swallow-tail battlements look much as they did.

Back on the city side, find the Arco dei Gavi, a 1st-century honorary arch built for a private family, the Gavii, which is rare. French military engineers took it apart in 1805 for reasons of security and traffic, and in 1932 it was put back together beside the castle, from the drawings and measurements made before it came down.

Walk along the Adige towards San Zeno, about 15 minutes, and eat in the streets around the square in front of the basilica, which is a residential district rather than a tourist one.

Order the primo, the pasta or rice course, and don't skip it for a salad: bigoli with duck ragù, potato gnocchi or a risotto are the local specialties. Ask for the piatto del giorno (dish of the day).

The Basilica of San Zeno is the most beautiful church in Verona, and one of the best Romanesque buildings in Italy. It stands over the tomb of Zeno, the city's eighth bishop, who died between 372 and 380. The first big church was consecrated in 806 and rebuilt after the 1117 earthquake, and most of the building you see was finished around 1138.

The facade is the thing: a plain stone front with a great rose window known as the Wheel of Fortune, and the famous bronze door panels. Inside, look for Andrea Mantegna's altarpiece, then go down to the crypt where Zeno rests. Dante counts among the poets the church has inspired.

Come back to the center for the wine that put Valpolicella on the map. Amarone is made from grapes dried for about four months before pressing, which concentrates the sugar, and then fermented dry: rich, dark and strong. It was first sold under that name in the 1950s and became a DOCG in 2009. The leftover skins go into ripasso, a Valpolicella refermented on Amarone pomace.

The Antica Bottega del Vino, on Vicolo Scudo di Francia, is a historic wine bar with one of the best-known cellars in Italy. The list runs to roughly 18,000 selections, and it has held Wine Spectator's Grand Award for more than twenty years. Ask for a short flight: a Valpolicella, a ripasso and an Amarone, with some cheese.

Sirmione sits on a narrow peninsula that sticks out into the lower lake. Rich families from Roman Verona kept holiday villas here from the 1st century BC, and the poet Catullus wrote about his. Later it passed to the Scaligers, then to Venice, which held it from 1405 to 1797.

The old town is a tangle of stone lanes between the castle and the tip. It's crowded in summer, with shops and gelato stands on every street, so arriving early in the morning is the way to see it at its best.

The castle sits at the entrance to the old town, on the water. The Scaligers began it in the late 13th century, and it's a rare example of a medieval port fortress that sheltered the Scaliger fleet. The walls are made of lake pebbles in bands of brick, topped with swallow-tail battlements, the Ghibelline kind that you saw at Castelvecchio.

Climb the tower for the view over the lake. The stairs are steep and narrow. The castle also carries a dark story that ties back to Verona: nearly 200 Cathars captured in Sirmione were burned in the Arena in 1278 on the order of Alberto I della Scala.

Eat lake fish, which is the local specialty. The cooking around Verona has always mixed fish from Lake Garda, cheese from the Lessinia hills and rice from the plains south of the city. In Sirmione you pay more for a table with a view, so walk a few streets back from the castle.

Skip any place with a menu of photographs. A plate of lake fish or a risotto with a glass of Lugana, the white wine of the lake's southern shore, is the right order.

Walk to the tip of the peninsula, about a kilometer, to the ruins of the most striking Roman private villa found in northern Italy: a rectangle of 167 by 105 meters on the cliff above the water. The poet Catullus wrote about a villa he had at Sirmione, and the ruins carry his name.

Wander the terraces. There's little to see but stone and sky, and the lake view is the one the villa's owners paid for.

Sirmione sits on a hot spring: the water comes out hot and is cooled for the pools. The Aquaria spa uses it, and a late soak is a good way to end a day on your feet.

It isn't cheap, so check prices and hours on the official site (termedisirmione.com) before you go. If you'd rather not pay, walk the lakeside at the end of the afternoon and take the train back for dinner.

Cross the river and walk to Veronetta, the university quarter, for the Giusti garden, one of the best late-Renaissance Italian gardens. The Giusti were a Tuscan family who came to Verona at the end of the 13th century and made their money dyeing wool. The garden was where the dye cauldrons stood and the cloth dried, and in the 16th century Agostino Giusti turned the works into a palace and a formal garden.

A long avenue of cypresses leads to a grotto and a stone mask. The box-hedge maze is an 1786 redesign by Luigi Trezza, not the original, and the garden was badly damaged in the Second World War.

It's a ten-minute walk down to the river and San Fermo, a church built on a church. The dark, quiet lower church is Benedictine and Romanesque, and above it the great hall of the Franciscans is much lighter. Traces of an older church lie in the foundations. It's dedicated to Fermo and Rustico, who according to tradition were beheaded on the river bank here in 304.

Go down first, then up.

Veronetta is the university quarter, with small osterie away from the main tourist streets. Look for one with a short menu and order potato gnocchi, a risotto or polenta with a stew. In cold weather, ask whether anyone serves lesso e pearà.

A dessert in Verona, if you want one, is nadalin, the low Christmas cake from the 13th century, or tiramisu.

The second Juliet site is a stone sarcophagus in a former Capuchin convent, and it's no more Juliet's than the balcony. It's an old stone trough that imagination passed off as her tomb. The look of the place dates from 1937, when Antonio Avena, who also dressed Juliet's House, gave it the air tourists expected.

The real reason to come is the museum around it, the Museo degli Affreschi G. B. Cavalcaselle, a collection of frescoes in a calm cloister. In summer the cloister hosts a Monday evening series that mixes Shakespeare with opera. Skip it if frescoes aren't your thing.

End on the Liston, the paved promenade that runs along the edge of Piazza Bra, first laid out in 1770 so the city's growing middle class had somewhere to be seen. It still works that way. Order a spritz or a glass of Soave, take a table facing the Arena and watch the evening passeggiata, the ritual walk, go by.

The tables cost more than a bar a street away, and the Arena view is why.

For a last dinner, try Locanda 4 Cuochi, on Via Alberto Mario, a lively contemporary trattoria that the Michelin Guide lists for good value. For a more traditional night, the same list names Trattoria I Masenini on Via Roma, which specializes in spit-roasted meats, and Al Bersagliere.

Order a risotto, or the pastissada if you want the real thing, and a glass of Valpolicella Ripasso.