A summer opera night
Thirty thousand candles on two-thousand-year tiers.
Ввласенко — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Emilio Roggero — CC BY-SA 4.0 · thievingjoker — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Jollieduck — CC BY-SA 4.0
The unnumbered stone steps usually sell to show night at modest prices — arrive two hours early for a good spot, rent a cushion at the door; curtain at sunset, ending near midnight: the complete experience for a pizza's price.
Inverse experiences: the Colosseum is majestic ruin watched from walkways; the Arena is alive and whole, its floor walked and tiers sat on unbarriered — here you inhabit the amphitheatre rather than view it. And yes, to the frequent question: its condition plainly beats the Colosseum's.
Piazza Bra itself — Verona's largest, with its marble café curve, the Liston — then marble Via Mazzini's shopping walk to Piazza delle Erbe and Juliet's house: all Verona unfolds from the Arena's gate.
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The Verona Arena is a first-century Roman amphitheatre finished fifty years before the Colosseum — Italy's third largest, but its true glory is never having retired: every summer since 1913 it becomes the world's largest open-air opera house, thirty thousand spectators lighting candles on its stone tiers on an Aida night — among the great musical rites on earth. By day you enter to walk its floor and climb its pink steps — Verona's famous marble — touching two thousand years by hand, the upper tiers opening Piazza Bra and the city. Summer nights turn it to pure enchantment: the giant opera sets waiting outside the walls all season are a free spectacle in themselves. Whoever hears opera here never forgets; whoever misses the season finds the day visit reason enough to love Verona.
Thirty thousand candles on two-thousand-year tiers.
The rosy tiers the whole city is built of.
Aida's sphinxes and pyramids crouching in the square all season.
Piazza Bra 1, 37121 Verona