Verona — Innamo

People come to Verona for Shakespeare and they leave surprised. The city is a proper, beautiful northern Italian city: Roman amphitheatre still in use two thousand years on, streets paved with pink Verona marble, serious food, and a position at the gateway to some of the greatest wine country in Italy. The Juliet balcony is lovely. It is also the least interesting thing in Verona.

When to go

June to August for the opera. September for the harvest. April for the city itself.

The Arena di Verona hosts its opera season from late June through August: full productions in a Roman amphitheatre, under the night sky, with candles lit at dusk. It is one of the great experiences in Italy, and you should book early.

September brings the grape harvest to Valpolicella and Soave, the wine country on either side of the city. April is Verona at its quietest and most genuinely lovely: the roses come into bloom, the river runs high, and the marble streets are dry and warm.

History

Two thousand years of continuous use.

The Arena, built in the first century AD, seats 15,000 people and has been doing so, in one form or another, ever since. Gladiators first, then medieval jousting, now Verdi and Puccini. The continuity is dizzying. Sit in it at dusk, when the candles come on and the sky goes dark above the open roof, and the scale of the place becomes suddenly, completely clear.

Castelvecchio, the great Scaligeri fortress on the river, houses a museum that is worth visiting as much for the Carlo Scarpa renovation as for the collection. Scarpa’s interventions in old buildings are a particular Italian art form. This is one of the finest examples in the country.

Food & Drink

Risotto all’Amarone. And the market, always the market.

Verona eats well and seriously. Risotto all’Amarone, made with the great wine of the region, is the dish you eat here: rich, purple-tinged, deeply savoury. The Mercato di Piazza Erbe, Verona’s daily market, is the right place to start any morning: cheeses, salumi, local polenta, the fruit from the Valpolicella hills.

In winter, try the pasta e fagioli, the bean and pasta soup that Veneto does better than anywhere. In summer, grilled lake fish from Garda, twenty minutes west. Verona is the kind of city where the restaurants do not need to explain themselves.

Valpolicella & Amarone

Some of Italy’s greatest wines, made twenty minutes from the city centre.

Valpolicella, Amarone della Valpolicella, Soave: three of Italy’s great wine appellations, and all of them within half an hour of Verona’s central piazza. Amarone in particular is extraordinary: rich, concentrated, made from grapes partially dried for months before pressing. It is the result of patience and tradition, and no photograph does it justice.

Nesse has worked closely with these wines and knows the estates worth visiting: family producers, old vines, people who are genuinely delighted to show you what they do. She will arrange the visits, the tastings, and the timing. This is not a coach tour. It is an introduction to people whose work you will want to understand.