And no, I never saw anything Romeo & Juliet related
The big problem with Verona is that everyone is there for the Romeo & Juliet horseshit. Thankfully, all that crap was on the other side of town from where I wanted to go. I don't like Shakespeare and maybe I'm a dick (possible) but I don't think Romeo and Juliet is romantic. It's a pair of teenagers being overly dramatic. You can easily avoid this Verona cash-cow. Just don't be either a dopey millenial couple or a member of a Chinese tour group and you'll do OK.
I never knew much about Verona's Roman background. I thought it was just a stock Italian mediaeval town with an unfortunate connection to Shakespeare and so had avoided it for most of my adult travelling life. In fact, you can't miss it. Right in the centre, in the massive Piazza Bra, is one of the biggest extant arenas in Europe. It really is well preserved. I'd been to a few before but most, like those in Chester and Trier, you need a lot of imagination. Not in Verona. The arena really is impressive and worth the entry. It's incredibly well preserved inside. The outside less so, what you can see is actually the main support structure. The main facade was plundered long ago and the couple of arches by the ticket booth are all that's left of it.
My favourite part was the undercroft. Beneath the terracing are all the corridors and structures that made the arena work. Dotted round the perimeter are the holding cells where you waited before going out to (more than likely) die in the arena. You cannot stand in there and not run out pretending to be Russell Crowe. And I said it before when I went to the arena in Trier, I cannot stand out there on the sand without a small part of me wondering what it was like to test yourself like that. But that's just a 21st century indulgence. In 30AD, you'd have been shitting yourself. Two thousand years after the fact it is easy to play "what if" when you don't have anything on the line. For the (mostly but not always) men who had to face that, it must have been terrifying.
While I was there I could hear something happening outside. I ran up the terracing, running out of steam about a third of the way. It's a hell of a long way and you realise that when you reach the top. I'm good with heights but I got serious vertigo up there. In the square below was a parade of different generations of the Alpini, the mountain warfare branch of the Italian Army's special forces. According to tradition, no member of the Alpini ever retires, he merely goes on extended leave. Some very tough old men down there.
Verona still has a couple of its Roman gates remaining. I was just wandering the streets, taken along with the flow of people. I turned down this street and right at the end was the Porta Borsari. This is the most intact of the gates remaining. The other, the Porta Leoni, is just a ruin.
It opens out on the other side onto a big, busy crossroads. It must've been like that in Roman times, too. It's maybe not the nicest now but the gate is impressive. It kind of reminded me of Bootham Bar in York, another (originally) Roman gate that also gives onto an ugly junction.
I know it's stupid to say, but I always find Roman architecture the most dated. I think it is because it was copied so badly so many times since. The ugly grey hulks of Victorian London. Mussolini's big lump of a train station in Milan. I felt the same thing in Constantinople when so much Byzantine architecture had been copied into shit civic buildings in Britain. Schools and council offices. You see so many badly done copies that when you see the original you can't enjoy it.
Just along the river is another gate, sitting kind of out of place. There's no road that it would align with and if there was it would end in the Adige. This is the Arco dei Gavi.
Or at least some of it is. The arch was rebuilt on Mussolini's orders from the remains of the original structure that had been moved elsewhere. It stood at the beginning of the road that led to the Porta Borsari but then in mediaeval times it was used as a gate in the new walls. Napoleon's occupying army demolished it and took it to the arena. Il Duce had the remains of it moved here and turned it into something that might have been what it originally looked like. Or might not.
It sits next to the Castelvecchio by the river bank and seems a bit lonely now.
Roman stuff is reused all through the city. I like wandering down side streets and found this on the way to the Porta Borsari. It's a restaurant built out of Roman columns. If you want to see the remnants of Rome in Verona then keep your eyes open. Follow alleyways. Look where everyone else isn't.
Verona is full of little places like this. And there's no-one here. They are all looking at an old balcony that someone decided a fictional character stood on.
Following the River Adige
I had no idea where I was going. I knew I wanted to get to San Zeno eventually and following the river seemed as good a way as any to get there. It was quiet, autumnal. In the distance was a castle. I wasn't expecting that so went for a nosey.
The Scaligeri dynasty built a castle here on the remains of a Roman fortress. It's an impressive place in an equally impressive location. They built it here, in the north of Verona, so they would have a clear run to Austria when things went sideways.
I love that outlook, that expectation that at some point the people you are lording it over are going to rise up against you. When, not if. And they did so the della Scala family legged it.
The castle is a museum now, one of the great works of the Italian architect, Carlo Scarpa. Obviously, it was shut. I learned long ago that if you want to visit any major historic site in Europe, don't do it at what would seem a sensible time. Like in the afternoon on a weekend. That would just be stupid. 10.15am on Tuesday? Knock yourself out. Right in the middle of when everyone is free? Forget it.
The castle leads to a fortified bridge. This was a key part of their escape plan. When an uprising began or the Venetians started expanding their empire then this was the way out. The bridge was built like an extension to the Castelvecchio. It's heavily fortified so nobody can stop you. There are battlements and loop-holes, a small force could hold this for a long time. Certainly long enough to enable you to get a hell of a long way north before they broke through.
I got myself up on to one of the walkways along the higher defences and then realised too late how bad an idea it was. There was only one down and it was swarmed by Chinese tourists coming the other way. There was a set of steps at the other end but these were blocked by a guy crawling up it on his hands and knees while his girlfriend stood at the top, regarding his pathetic attempt with utter disgust. It would be a long time before he saw a blowjob again.
From Castelvecchio I wandered south down quiet, scruffy streets. I really wanted to see San Zeno. I'm not a huge fan of churches but San Zeno is complex of really old buildings. But the big draw, San Zeno himself is there. On show, his skeleton dressed in his bishop's robes. I'm fascinated by ancient relics and the cults that grow up round them and the more macabre there better.
But, again, I made the mistake of trying to visit at what would seem like a sensible time to be open. It wasn't, it was shut. Instead, the square is filled with little bars where you can sit outside under the trees and drink Aperol.
I walked back the way I'd come. I was a little bit downbeat. San Zeno would be open in a couple of hours but I had to split. I had to reach Bergamo via the Roman ruins in Brescia so didn't have the time to hang around. I was also worn out. All day I'd felt like shit. I'd woken up feeling rough without any real explanation. I hadn't drank any alcohol and the only food I'd had was prepacked from a supermarket. But I was exhausted. The day was blazing hot by this point, too, and I was gradually feeling worse and worse as time passed.
Central Verona is OK. A lot of it is very standard European city material, H&M, Calzedonia and all the other generic chains you see. You could be dropped in any city in Europe and not have a clue where you were until you heard someone speak because they all look exactly the same. One of the reasons I liked travel is the nostalgia. A lot of places were still like where I grew up in the 70's and 80's. But that's gradually disappearing and the slow creep of blandness is filtering into everywhere. I guess a lot of people love that Barcelona looks like Amsterdam which looks like Munich which looks like Paris. I don't.
I know I said I avoided anything Romeo and Juliet related but this statue is unavoidable. It's on the remains of the city gate heading south out of Piazza Bra as you go down the main street towards the train station.
It shows the bullshit that surrounds the modern tourist industry. Shakespeare never mentions a balcony in the play: Juliet stands in an open window. According to historians James Daybell and Sam Willis, balconies had not even been invented yet. But that hasn't stopped Verona cashing in on the idea. Everywhere invents "traditions" now to service gullible tour groups. There was no "tradition" of rubbing statues' appendages for luck, for leaving padlocks on bridges to show your love or any of the rest of this bullshit. Tour guides invented it. If there is a group of people I utterly despise then tour guides would be it. If you think a smart-arse Australian on a gap year is a local expert then you deserve what you get.
There's some surprising historicity in Shakespeare. Some have theorised that he either served in the military or was related to people who had because his descriptions in Henry V are so good. He set three plays in this part of Italy. In The Taming of the Shrew, he has his characters married in the "old chapel of St Luke" rather than the main basilica of St Anthony which academics have suggested meant he either travelled here or was associated with certain devout Catholics who had. But Juliet's balcony? That really is an invention.
Anyway, that was Verona done for me. I crossed through the old town gate which led into the modern part of the city and the long walk to the station. I hadn't planned on spending much time here because I really didn't fancy it. All the Romeo & Juliet bullshit, the hoardes of Chinese and American tourists. But it was actually a place that allowed for a lot of escape from the main "sights". Thank God most tourists are lazy and didn't make the slow shuffle along the river. You can avoid them easily.
Getting there: Verona is on the main east/west train line and has a fairly busy station (Porta Nuova) but it is a decent walk into town. Maybe at least 30 minutes to Piazza Bra. The area around the station is very lonely at night, too. There's nothing there for a long way, until you hit the main street into town, Corso Porta Nuova. I'd aim to reach Verona in the daytime or shell out on a taxi to the hotel. I didn't particularly enjoy the walk in the dark on my own. I also thought the station itself was a bit rough, it's not a place that feels that safe. When I caught the train to Brescia, I switched carriages a couple of times until I found one that didn't look like it was filled with cut-throats. Maybe I'm a prick for judging people on appearance but I'd rather be safe than nice.
Left luggage: I stashed my bag in a private locker place called Luggage Storage Verona on Via Carlo Cattaneo. It's up a side-street just off Piazza Bra. The place is unattended and is just a doorway in an alley that opens into a room filled with automated lockers. Caveat emptor, there is zero security and the lockers are just laminate panels. There's CCTV but someone with a crowbar could have half the lockers open before anyone broke a sweat. Consider it maybe a level safer than just dumping your bag in the street.
