In (& around) fair Verona

Many of northern Italy’s key wine-growing regions are to be found between the city of Verona and stunning Lake Garda. Our guide to the area takes in wineries, ancient monuments, top restaurants and more, as we pass through illustrious wine zones and historic villages and towns

- ALESSANDRA PIUBELLO

Wander among the squares, lanes and shady courtyards of the dreamily romantic city of Verona – a UNESCO World Heritage site – and you’re sure to be captivated by its timeless allure. Verona’s treasure chest of historic wonders even includes a legend: the star-crossed lovers. ‘There is no world without Verona walls / But purgatory, torture, hell itself / Hence banishèd is banished from the world / And world’s exile is death’, as Shakespeare famously described it in Romeo and Juliet. Where better to bring your beloved than to the city of love? On a balmy summer evening, you can stroll along the ‘liston’ (what the locals call the wide pavement made from Prun marble dotted with ammonite fossils) to Piazza Bra. Once there, close your eyes and be carried away on the notes floating over from the Arena, one of the world’s best-preserved Roman amphitheaters. Whether you’re visiting during the famous summer opera festival or attending a rock concert, a night at the Arena is a thrill that everyone should experience.

A walk around town reveals traces of more than two millennia of history, spanning Roman (Verona had been an ancient settlement, but the Romans founded the city in the 1st century BC), the Middle Ages (Basilica di San Zeno, a Romanesque masterpiece), the Scaliger ruling dynasty (the monumental gothic Scaliger Tombs), the Venetians and the Habsburgs.