Verona - The city of Romeo and Juliet

16th March 2008

After Milan, we continued our journey to Verona. It was not until we reached the bronze Juliet's statue I suddenly recalled that I have been to this city before. Of course it was 14 years ago. No wonder some memories slipped my mind...

Roman Amphitheatre

There is another coliseum which existed at least 40 years before the Rome’s Coliseum. The arena is like a pink marble Roman amphitheatre, built in 1^st AD and is now a opera house. It can sit around 20,000 people and remarkably well preserved.

It was Sunday afternoon when we arrived. There were lots of people, both tourists and locals visiting the city at the same time. It was almost impossible to walk passed the narrow street without pushing elbow to elbow.

Piazza Delle Erbe

Originally the site of Roman forum, but the permanent market stalls in its centre detract from its beauty, the square actually is the lined with some of Verona’s most sumptuous buildings.

Casa Di Giulietta – Romeo and Juliet may have been utterly functional but here you can swoon beneath what the popular myth says was on her balcony.

The slew of scribbled love graffiti on the wall of the house.

The Arco della Costa, beneath which a whale’s rib is suspended. Legend says it will fall on the first ‘just’ person to walk beneath it. In several centuries, it has never fallen, not even on the various popes who have paraded beneath it.