What to see in Verona: 15 places (including the ones tourists never find)
Verona is one of the most photographed cities in Italy. The photos going around, though, are always the same ones – Juliet’s balcony, the Arena, Piazza delle Erbe – and they tell more or less the same story every time. The Verona tourists find easily, which is beautiful, but which doesn’t describe the whole city.
In this list, alongside the great classics – which you shouldn’t miss anyway – you’ll find other places, told with the kind of detail that traditional guidebooks skip. And then you’ll find the places of the real Verona, the ones locals know and use, which change the way you understand the city.
Ready? We start with the classics, told our way.
The classics — there’s always something nobody told you
1. The Verona Arena — the buried Roman structure nobody looks for
Do you know how many people walk into the Arena every year and never look down? Almost all of them. The current floor of the amphitheatre covers a deeper original arena, with underground structures that included the animal cages and the gladiators’ corridors. But there is something else that very few people know: the Arena is older than the Colosseum. It dates from 30 AD, the Colosseum from 80. And yet in the guidebooks the hierarchy is always the other way round.
The other detail worth knowing: the fragment of four arches standing alone on the north side — the Ala, as locals call it — is all that remains of the original outer ring. It was made of seventy-two arches on three levels. In the Ostrogothic period, under the reign of Theodoric, the outer ring was partly dismantled to be used as building stone. What you see today is a shred of what once was.
2. Piazza delle Erbe — the Roman forum that never disappeared
The most photographed square in Verona is also the most layered. Under the bricks you walk on lies the Roman forum: the central square of the ancient city, with the same proportions and the same orientation as today. The fountain at the centre — Madonna Verona — uses a fourth-century Roman statue as a decorative element. The lion of Saint Mark on the column is Venetian. The Mazzanti houses carry sixteenth-century frescoes that are slowly fading.
Look up as you cross the square: the façades change style every three metres. Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Venetian. It is a vertical architectural stratigraphy. Very few people notice it, because they are too busy looking at the market stalls.
3. Castelvecchio and the Scaliger Bridge — the finest museum you probably skipped
Many visitors step into the Castelvecchio courtyard, take a few photos of the crenellated bridge and leave, missing the chance to see a wonderful museum — wonderful both for what it holds and for the building that holds it. Inside is one of the most important medieval art museums in northern Italy, designed by Carlo Scarpa in the 1960s in a project widely considered a masterpiece of museum architecture. Scarpa left the cuts visible, the layers in the walls, the changes in level between different eras. The museum doesn’t hide history: it shows it.
The Scaliger Bridge dates from 1354. Walking across it — which you can do for free — gives you a perspective on the Adige and on the fortress walls that you get from nowhere else. It is one of the best-preserved defensive medieval bridges in Europe.
4. The Scaliger Tombs — an open-air dynastic cemetery in the old town
Thirty seconds from Piazza dei Signori, behind a wrought-iron railing many tourists mistake for the fence of a private palace, stand the Gothic tombs of the Scaliger family. Cangrande I, Mastino II, Cansignorio: the three most powerful lords of medieval Verona, buried in four-metre-high equestrian sarcophagi, with carved marble canopies and sculptures that inspired centuries of European art.
Dante was a guest in those palaces. The tombs were built after his death, but he walked a few steps from where the tombs of his patrons stand today. If you have read our magazine article on Dante in Verona, you already know why this place carries such literary weight.
5. The Basilica of San Zeno — the Romanesque masterpiece that is never talked about enough
San Zeno is only ten minutes on foot from the Arena: outside the classic old-town tours, and yet worth the walk. The basilica is considered one of the most important examples of Romanesque architecture in Italy: the twelfth-century bronze doors with their biblical reliefs, Mantegna’s triptych on the high altar, the crypt where the city’s patron saint is buried.
Dante mentions it in canto XVIII of Purgatorio: the abbot of San Zeno is one of the characters in the Comedy. And in the beautiful garden of the adjoining cloister, on a sunny day, you understand why Verona earned its UNESCO listing.
The unexpected places — the ones that change the visit
6. The Arco della Costa — the whale bone hanging between two squares
Between Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza dei Signori there is a covered archway. Look up at the vault and you will find a large rib — probably a whale’s — hanging there for at least three centuries. The arch is called Arco della Costa, the arch of the rib, precisely because of that bone.
The most plausible explanation is that it was an apothecary’s sign: at the time, powdered whale bone was believed to have healing properties. The pharmacy beneath it still exists today. Legend, on the other hand, says the rib will fall the day an honest and pure soul walks under the arch. We have been waiting for centuries; nothing has happened yet.
7. The Giusti Garden — the hidden Renaissance across the river
On the left bank of the Adige, in the Veronetta district, hides one of the finest Renaissance gardens in Italy. The Giusti Garden was created in the 1400s, and Goethe visited it during his stay in Verona in 1786 — the same trip on which he was struck by the Arena. Mozart came through in 1770, aged fourteen.
Cypresses as tall as towers, panoramic terraces, an artificial grotto, a small maze and a postcard view over the city. There is an entrance fee, and it is worth every cent. The best moment is late afternoon, when the light on the red stone buildings is impossible to forget.
8. Via Sottoriva — the medieval street nobody photographs
Two minutes from Piazza delle Erbe, along the bank of the Adige, lies one of the most intact streets of the medieval centre. Via Sottoriva still has its original low porticoes, trattorias with handwritten menus, and workshops that have looked the same for decades. It is what everybody is looking for when they say they want to discover the “real Verona”, and it sits four minutes from the busiest spot in the city.
You won’t find souvenir shops here, but rather locals having lunch.
9. Porta Borsari — the Roman gateway inside the modern city
Walking along Corso Cavour towards the centre, you pass under a first-century Roman arch that most tourists walk through without stopping. This is Porta Borsari: one of the two great entrance arches of the original Roman city, its white stone façade still intact across two levels of blind windows.
Stop on the other side and look at the structure: what you see is the front of a Roman city gate from around 40 AD, in perfect condition. It is worth knowing that this was also the route of the old Verona Palio — the foot race Dante watched during his stay and immortalised in canto XV of the Inferno, where he compares a figure to the runners racing for the green cloth across the fields of Verona.
10. Castel San Pietro and the funicular — the view locals keep to themselves
At the top of the hill above the Roman Theatre there is a terrace from which you can see the whole of Verona: the Arena, the squares, the river, the Valpolicella hills in the background. Tourists do look for it, but many don’t know there is a funicular that goes up for a few euros. The walk up the medieval staircases is worth it too: shaded, quiet, with unexpected views over the rooftops.
The ideal moment is an hour before sunset. The low light on Verona’s red stone creates a palette you don’t forget. It is the favourite viewpoint of photographers and of locals escaping the crowds.
The tour places — where history really makes sense with a guide
11. Piazza dei Signori (Piazza Dante) — the heart of Scaliger power
Locals call it Piazza Dante, not Piazza dei Signori. The statue of the poet at its centre explains why: Dante lived here, a guest in the palaces around the square, while he was writing the Paradiso. The plaque with Cacciaguida’s lines is on the wall of one of those palaces. Caffè Dante is still there, with the same name it has had for a century.
The square is also where all the great themes of Verona’s history intersect: the Scaligers, Dante, Venetian rule, the Risorgimento. It is the place where the overlap between different centuries is densest and easiest to read. It is one of the most beautiful squares in Italy, and with a guide every palace turns into a story.
12. The Roman Theatre and the Archaeological Museum — the lesser-known side of the hill
On the left bank of the Adige, at the foot of the San Pietro hill, stands a first-century BC Roman theatre in extraordinary condition. The theatre still hosts concerts and summer performances – the best ones are in the evening, with the hills behind the stage – one of those experiences that stay with you.
Above the theatre, in the Augustinian convent carved into the hillside, is the Archaeological Museum: Roman mosaics, bronzes, ceramics, and a panoramic terrace with one of the best views over the city. It is systematically underrated compared with the Arena, which means you will almost always find it empty.
13. The Basilica of Sant’Anastasia — the two hunchbacks at the door and Pisanello’s dragon
Sant’Anastasia is the largest Gothic church in Verona. The façade was never finished — in five centuries nobody has agreed on how to complete it. Inside, two details are the ones people almost always remember: the holy water fonts at the entrance, held up by two hunched, twisted figures that seem to rise out of the floor like stone ghosts, and Pisanello’s fresco in the Pellegrini chapel, showing Saint George and the princess, considered one of the greatest masterpieces of international Gothic art in Italy.
If you are following the Shakespeare’s Verona itinerary, Sant’Anastasia is one of the settings of the story. If instead you are following Dante’s route, there is a link here too: the Alighieri family — the poet’s descendants who stayed in Verona — had their house right in front of the church.
14. The left bank of the Adige — the sacred route of the little Jerusalem
Crossing the Adige towards the Veronetta district, you enter a part of the city most tourists never reach. This is where the Verona “o minor Hierusalem” route runs: the early Christian churches built by Archdeacon Pacificus in the ninth century to recreate the holy places of Jerusalem, the seal reading VERONA MINOR HIERUSALEM, and the church that holds more than 30,000 relics of saints, arranged by liturgical calendar — unique in Europe.
15. The Adige Museum and the Venetian Customs House — the river port nobody knows exists
There is a museum in Verona that tells you something fundamental: the relationship between the city and its river. The Adige Museum sits inside the Dogana Veneta dei Filippini, the former river customs house where goods were taxed before entering and leaving the city. Documents, tools, maps, records of the medieval merchant port.
The best way to get there is from the river. If you go rafting on the Adige, the customs house is one of the three themed stops along the route: you see it first from the raft, then you go inside. It is one of those rare cases where the means of transport is part of the experience.