Current Time in Verona, Italy

Verona is a historic city in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, situated on a bend of the Adige River approximately 65 kilometers east of Milan and 115 kilometers west of Venice. With a population of approximately 258,000, it is the second-largest city in the Veneto and one of the most important cities in northern Italy — a major commercial, transportation, and cultural center that is also one of the most beautiful and historically rich cities in the country. Its extraordinary Roman monuments, its medieval and Romanesque architecture, and its universal association with the tragic lovers of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (which Shakespeare set here, though he never visited) have made it one of Italy's most visited cities, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.

Verona was an important Roman city — initially a Latin colony and later a municipium — whose strategic position at the crossing of the Adige River and at the junction of several important Alpine routes made it a city of considerable military and commercial importance. The Roman Arena, an amphitheatre built in the first century AD and capable of seating approximately 30,000 spectators, is the most impressive Roman monument in Verona and one of the best-preserved in the world. Still in continuous use today for opera performances and concerts during the summer season, the Arena is the setting for the famous Verona Opera Festival (Arena di Verona), established in 1913, which presents grand-scale productions of Verdi, Puccini, and other operas under the open stars. Seeing Aida or Nabucco in this ancient setting is one of the great operatic experiences available anywhere in the world.

The city's medieval architecture is equally impressive. The Piazza delle Erbe, the ancient forum converted into a medieval herb market, is one of the most beautiful piazzas in Italy — surrounded by medieval towers, Gothic and Baroque palaces, and frescoed facades, with the Baroque Palazzo Maffei and the Lamberti Tower framing a chaotic, colorful daily market. The adjacent Piazza dei Signori is more sober and monumental, featuring the Scaliger tombs — the extraordinary Gothic funerary monuments of the Scaligeri family, the lords of Verona in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, enclosed in a wrought-iron Gothic screen — and the Cangrande loggia.

The legendary association with Romeo and Juliet, though entirely fictional, is embraced by Verona with cheerful commercial efficiency. The courtyard of the so-called Casa di Giulietta (Juliet's House) in the Via Cappello draws enormous crowds of visitors who come to touch the bronze statue of Juliet, attach padlocks to the gates, and leave love notes in the cracks of the walls — a ritual with no historical basis whatsoever but enormous emotional resonance. The balcony from which Juliet supposedly addressed Romeo is a nineteenth-century addition. None of this deters the millions of visitors who come each year specifically for this fictional association.

The Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore, built between the ninth and twelfth centuries and considered one of the supreme examples of Italian Romanesque architecture, stands in a quiet piazza west of the historic center. Its bronze door panels, cast in the twelfth century and depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments and the life of Saint Zeno, are among the great achievements of medieval Italian metalwork. The altarpiece by Andrea Mantegna, though its central panel is now in the Louvre, remains one of the defining works of northern Italian Renaissance painting.

Verona is a major commercial center for the wine trade — it hosts Vinitaly, the world's largest wine trade fair — and the Valpolicella, Amarone, Soave, and Bardolino wine production zones are all located in the hills surrounding the city. The University of Verona, founded in 1982, and the ancient Accademia Filarmonica (founded 1543, with Mozart as its honorary kapellmeister) add to the city's intellectual and musical life. Verona is served by Valerio Catullo Airport and is a major rail junction with high-speed connections to Milan, Venice, Bologna, and Rome.