Things to do in Verona

Verona built an amphitheatre in the first century AD that still stages opera every summer. The Arena is the reason most people come. Shakespeare set a play here without ever visiting, and the city has spent a century turning that fiction into its second industry.

The Arena and the centre

The Arena seats thirty thousand. It ranks third in size among Roman amphitheatres, behind the Colosseum and the one at Capua. Opera has run here nearly every summer since 1913, when Aida marked Verdi's centenary.

The outer ring is mostly gone. A medieval earthquake brought it down and spared the rest. Piazza delle Erbe, the old Roman forum, still works as a market square, ringed by frescoed houses and towers.

A short walk away sits Piazza dei Signori. The open-air Scaligeri tombs mark the family that ruled Verona for a century, buried under their own stone arches.

A house that never was Juliet's

• Casa di Giulietta. A real thirteenth-century house that once belonged to a family called Cappello, close enough to Capulet to fix its fate. The famous balcony was only assembled in the 1930s, from old loose marble.
• Castelvecchio. The Scaligeri family's own fortress, built in the 1350s and now the city's main art museum, with a bridge across the Adige rebuilt stone for stone after 1945.
• Out to the lake. Sirmione and Lake Garda's southern shore sit under an hour away by bus, a common half-day out of the city.

Practical

• Opera season. June to September. Stone steps turn hard after three hours; a cushion is worth renting at the gate.
• Weather. July and August pass 30C and the Arena stone holds the heat into the evening; January days sit near 6C, often in fog.
• Getting around. The centre is flat and walkable; buses cover the station-to-Arena stretch when bags are heavy.
• Sunday. Fewer museums open, though the Arena and the piazzas run as normal.
• Aperitivo. Spritz culture runs strong here, and bars fill from six onward.