Beautiful medieval palaces, houses in pale pastel colours, some adorned with Renaissance paintings, and a church with a sarcophagus that seems partly suspended in mid-air. Piping-hot pizzas covered in thick layers of mozzarella, freshly gathered truffles, Juliet’s balcony and the world’s oldest library. Verona is a fairy-tale city full of hidden gems and tucked-away alleyways, where everything breathes history and romance.
The bronze angel stands outside the cathedral on Piazza Duomo as we turn a street corner. Its arms are outstretched in welcome, its face bathed in sunshine. Shadows play across the square, lined with hotels, beautiful buildings and the entrance to what is said to be the world’s oldest library. The angel’s eyes gaze downwards and beyond us, its wings spread behind its back. There is something strangely timeless about the scene.
The beautiful angel, more than two metres tall and known as Angelo dell’Accoglienza, or the “Angel of Welcome”, is the work of contemporary sculptor and glass artist Albano Poli. Yet the site’s history stretches back more than 2,000 years, from Roman houses with private baths and a Christian basilica built in the fourth century to the present church, consecrated in 1187 after the earthquake of 1117. A little like Verona itself, revealing faces both old and new, where fiction and reality float side by side above the streets, like the multicoloured fragments of glass in a kaleidoscope.
We arrive by train in the evening, with dusk already fallen. I have travelled from Cannes in France, via Ventimiglia and Milan, while my friend has come from Venice. We have time for a walk through the old quarters, where pizzerias, trattorias, osterias and cafés line the streets beneath the dark night sky. The ancient Roman amphitheatre, Arena di Verona, built in the first century AD and predating the Colosseum in Rome, is beautifully illuminated. White tents offering wines from different vineyards, cheeses, biscuits, pastries, sausages and hams, mortadella and white and black truffles line the square. Some sort of food market is under way.
We eat homemade pizza at a local restaurant before walking back towards the hotel along the river. In the distance, the red-brick Ponte di Castelvecchio, also known as Ponte Scaligero, and the battlemented Castelvecchio castle rise above the city. Both were built in 1354–1356 on the orders of Verona’s ruler, Cangrande II della Scala. The bridge gave him an escape route across the River Adige in the event of an uprising in the city. It was blown up by retreating German troops in 1945 but rebuilt after the war.
It is, of course, Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet that draws so many tourists to Verona. You can stroll over to Juliet’s balcony and leave a love letter or buy a Romeo and Juliet souvenir. But for anyone willing to go against the flow, there is so much more to discover in this fascinating city. Beautiful palaces, leafy courtyards, grand buildings and churches lie hidden among its winding lanes and streets. We descend a few flights of steps below ground to explore the remains and foundations of the great Roman temple that once stood here. At the ticket desk sits one of the archaeologists who actually helped excavate parts of the temple in the 1990s. Delighted by our interest, he happily tells us what it was like to dig here more than 30 years ago and what they found.
Back in the sunshine, we pass buildings on Piazza delle Erbe whose façades are covered in Renaissance paintings from the sixteenth century, and the Gothic Basilica di Sant’Anastasia. Here, the sarcophagus in which the powerful nobleman Guglielmo da Castelbarco has rested since 1320 seems to float high in the air, perched on an archway. We wander past shops, restaurants, lively bars and cosy cafés, eventually finding ourselves on Piazza Duomo, home to the oldest library.
And here the majestic angel keeps watch in the sunshine, forever welcoming visitors to Verona and solitary wanderers, its hands reaching out into eternity.
