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 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
Museo Lapidario MaffeianoIn 1745, before the idea of a public museum was really a normal thing in Europe,3 minutes walk4.2
Corso CavourA street in central Verona running from the Roman Borsari gate to the Castelvecc4 minutes walk4.6
Porta BorsariPorta Borsari is Verona's front Roman door standing in place since the first cen4 minutes walk4.5
Palazzo Bocca TrezzaA nineteenth-century palace west of central Verona, built for the Bocca Trezza f5 minutes walk4.9
San Fermo MaggioreSan Fermo is not one church but two, stacked. What you walk into at street level5 minutes walk4.8The 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.