VERONA TRAVEL GUIDE: How to Feel, Eat and Live the City of Romeo, Opera, and Ancient Stone

Shakespeare chose Verona, and he was right. There is something about this city — the pink Roman limestone, the Adige curving through its center, the medieval towers rising above the baroque piazzas — that makes it the natural setting for stories about beauty and consequence. But the real Verona is more interesting than the literary myth, and far less visited than it deserves.

In this complete travel guide, Sofía Kristiansen takes you through every layer of the city: the Roman Arena, one of the finest amphitheaters in the world and the summer stage for opera of international significance, the Scaligeri Gothic tombs and the Castelvecchio with Carlo Scarpa's masterwork of museum renovation, the Romanesque basilica of San Zeno and the Mantegna altarpiece inside it, the Romeo and Juliet industry approached with appropriate affection and appropriate skepticism, and the wine culture of the surrounding hills — Amarone, Valpolicella, Soave — that makes the Veronese table one of the finest in the Veneto. Then Lake Garda twenty minutes west, the Dolomites an hour north, and two thousand years of ancient stone holding everything together. Verona has been beautiful for a very long time, and it knows it.