Top Historic Sights in Verona, Italy
Explore the historic highlights of Verona
Verona Amphitheatre
The Verona Arena is a Roman amphitheatre built in 1st century. It is still in use today and is internationally famous for the large-scale opera performances given there. It is one of the best preserved ancient structures of its kind. In ancient times, nearly 30,000 people was the housing capacity of the Arena. The building itself was built in AD 30 on a site which was then beyond the city walls. The round façade o ...
Founded: c. 30 AD |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Scaliger Tombs
The Scaliger Tombs is a group of five Gothic funerary monuments in Verona, celebrating the Scaliger family, who ruled in Verona from the 13th to the late 14th century. The tombs are located in a court of the church of Santa Maria Antica, separated from the street by a wall with iron grilles. Built in Gothic style, they are a series of tombs, most of which are in the shape of a small temple and covered by a baldachin. Acc ...
Founded: c. 1329 |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Castelvecchio
Castelvecchio ('Old Castle') is the most important military construction of the Scaliger dynasty that ruled the city in the Middle Ages. The castle stands on the probable location of a Roman fortress outside the Roman city. Lord Cangrande II della Scala had it built along with its bridge across the Adige River as a deterrent to his powerful neighbors such as Venice, the Gonzaga and the Sforza families. Construction was ca ...
Founded: 1354 |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Roman Theatre
The Roman theatre of Verona should not to be confused with the Roman amphitheatre known as the Verona Arena. The theatre was built in the late 1st century BC. Before its construction, two walls were built alongside the Adige River, between the Ponte di Pietra and the Ponte Postumio, to protect it against floods. Today only remains of the edifice are visible, recovered starting from around 1830. They include the cavea and ...
Founded: 0-100 AD |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Ponte Pietra
The Ponte Pietra (Italian for 'Stone Bridge'), is a Roman arch bridge crossing the Adige River in Verona. The bridge was completed in 100 BC, and the Via Postumia from Genoa to Aquileia passed over it. It is the oldest bridge in Verona. It originally flanked another Roman bridge, the Pons Postumius; both structures provided the city (on the right bank) with access to the Roman theatre on the east bank. The arch nearest t ...
Founded: 100 BC |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Sant Anastasia Church
Sant"Anastasia church building started in 1280 and completed in 1400, designed by the Dominican friars. It took its name from a pre-existing temple built by King Theoderic the Great upon which was built the actual church. Since 1307, it is in fact co-entitled to St. Peter of Verona, martyr and co-patron of the city. Consecrated only in 1471, until 1808 the church was held by the Dominicans. The 72 mt tall belltower ...
Founded: 1280 |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Verona Cathedral
Verona Cathedral was erected after two Palaeo-Christian churches on the same site had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1117. Built in Romanesque style, the cathedral was consecrated on September 13, 1187. The structure was later modified by several renovation interventions, although the plan has remained unchanged. The façade is divided into three parts, with a pediment and a two storied projecting porch or prot ...
Founded: 1187 |
Location:
Verona, Italy
San Pietro Castle
Verona was founded to the site of current Castel San Pietro. This green hill, crowned by cypresses, is home to the remains of the first settlements dating back to the 7th century B.C. From this magnificent vantage-point you can enjoy the view of the whole city spreading out, with its network of Roman Roads, its walls, tall towers and steeples and, if your eyesight is good, you can even make out part of the Arena and the P ...
Founded: 1393 |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Basilica of San Zeno
The Basilica di San Zeno name rests partly on its architecture and partly upon the tradition that its crypt was the place of the marriage of Shakespeare"s Romeo and Juliet. It stands adjacent to a Benedictine abbey, both dedicated to St Zeno of Verona. St. Zeno died in 380. According to legend, at a site above his tomb along the Via Gallica, the first small church was erected by Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostr ...
Founded: 9th century |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Santi Apostoli Church
Santi Apostoli, with the adjacent Romanesque chapel of the Sante Teuteria e Tosca, is an ancient Roman Catholic church in front of a piazza off Corso Cavour. A church at this site of the Chiesetta was consecrated in 751 on an earlier fifth-century structure, but reconstructed in the 12th-century. Reconstruction of this and Santi Apostoli were pursued across the centuries including major ones in the 18th and 20th-centuries ...
Founded: 12th century |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Sant'Eufemia Church
The church of Sant"Eufemia is an ancient church in Verona. A church at the site was likely present by the 11th or 12th centuries, although the main layout we see today was completed only in the 14th century. In the interior, altarpieces were completed by Brusasorci and Giovanni Domenico Cignaroli. In the 14th century Spolverini chapel, there is a canvas and frescos by Giovanni Francesco Caroto. The gothic belltower c ...
Founded: 14th century |
Location:
Verona, Italy
San Fermo Maggiore Church
San Fermo Maggiore is a medieval Romanesque church. A church at this site may has been traced to the 8th century, and by the 11th century a second story and belltower was added by the Benedictine order. The campanile was not completed until the 13th century, it contains six bells in F cast in 1755 and rung with the Veronese bellringing art. The exterior has a roofline with pinnacles, and the church once held the tomb of a ...
Founded: 11th century |
Location:
Verona, Italy
San Giorgio in Braida
San Giorgio in Braida church was built in the 16th century in the medieval quarter of Veronetta. The 12th-century bell tower is what remains of a monastery built in the 11th century. The facade is marble white with two rows of pillars. The statues of St. George and St. Lorenzo Giustiniani are on sides. The interior has a single nave built between 1536 and 1543, and contains key works of art. Above the main door is a Tinto ...
Founded: 16th century |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Montorio Castle Ruins
Montorio Castle was presumably a look-out post which was once part of the Verona city fortifications and which is first mentioned in documents dating back to 995 AD. It was subsequently rebuilt by the Aldobrandeschi in the Middle Ages and restructured by the Ottieri and then transformed into a fortified farmhouse after the annexation of the county in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Only certain sections of the structure remai ...
Founded: 10th century AD |
Location:
Verona, Italy
San Bernardino
San Bernardino was built in Gothic style from 1451 to 1466. The church"s origin are connected to the presence of San Bernardino in the city from 1422, during which he founded a convent of nuns for the order of the Minor Friars and, later, another one for monks. He was canonized in 1450, six years after his death, and in 1451 his successor Giovanni da Capestrano started the construction of a large complex for the orde ...
Founded: 1451-1466 |
Location:
Verona, Italy
Featured Historic Landmarks, Sites & Buildings
Photo from Flickr, copyright Andy Montgomery
Historic Site of the week
Arch of Constantine
The Arch of Constantine is situated between the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill. It was erected by the Roman Senate to commemorate Constantine I's victory over Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. Dedicated in 315, it is the largest Roman triumphal arch. The arch spans the Via triumphalis, the way taken by the emperors when they entered the city in triumph.
Though dedicated to Constantine, much of the decorative material incorporated earlier work from the time of the emperors Trajan (98-117), Hadrian (117-138) and Marcus Aurelius (161-180), and is thus a collage. The last of the existing triumphal arches in Rome, it is also the only one to make extensive use of spolia, reusing several major reliefs from 2nd century imperial monuments, which give a striking and famous stylistic contrast to the sculpture newly created for the arch.
The arch is 21 m high, 25.9 m wide and 7.4 m deep. Above the archways is placed the attic, composed of brickwork reveted (faced) with marble. A staircase within the arch is entered from a door at some height from the ground, on the west side, facing the Palatine Hill. The general design with a main part structured by detached columns and an attic with the main inscription above is modelled after the example of the Arch of Septimius Severus on the Roman Forum.