Verona

On Wednesday morning, 15 November, we moved out of our first hotel, packed into the bus and headed to the Veneto region, home to a number of famous cities in Italy. First stop, Verona. I have to confess to knowing little about Verona prior to our visit. Well, that isn't entirely true, but I had a fairly warped view of what I should expect having visited primarily through the eyes of Shakespeare in plays such as the comic Two Gentlemen of Verona and the tragic Romeo and Juliet.

Verona has roots back at least as far as the Romans. The third largest amphitheater in Italy (and the world) is in Verona. Much of the original Roman city lies some 20 feet below the current city. The public amphitheater is a central feature of the Roman empire. It provided a sense of community and offered a way for the leaders to both entertain and provide propaganda to the masses: panem et circenses.

One of the entrances to the ground level of the amphitheater is shown below. The theater is open to the public, but there is a fee to enter and we will be seeing the Colosseum in Rome later this year which is actually larger and at least as well preserved.

A second, major tourist attraction in Verona is based on the Romeo and Juliet theme. Both characters are legendary, so a trip to "Romeo's house" or "Juliet's house" is a pilgrimage of futility. But, like many legends, there is the potential for a germ of truth in there somewhere. Shakespeare was not the first to write of them; there are older versions of the story in Italian. What is true is that there were two important houses in a divided Verona and it is possible that two star-crossed lovers might have existed. If you are in the mood to indulge your fantasy, you can head on over to "Juliet's house" (the family home of one of the two aforementioned families), and peer up at Juliet's balcony.

And take in a statue of Juliet.

You might notice that Juliet's right breast is quite shiny. This is because it is generally held that if you touch her right breast you will find true love in the coming year (or some such nonsense). I just think it is kind of interesting that they encourage you to touch the statue, never mind they want you to fondle her breast in public. Awkward! You can also buy a lock, write your name and the name of your true love on it and lock it onto a metal grating which covers a window behind and to the left of the statue. Given the popularity of such practices in Italy, they must routinely cut bucket loads of locks off. What happens to your love then? You can also write a letter to Juliet and stuff it in the wall.

In our free time we opted for a walk to the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore, a Romanesque church dedicated to the patron saint of Verona, Saint Zeno. Basically, Zeno was a good guy who might have been hassled by contemporaries, but wasn't martyred in the classic, burned-at-the-stake or flayed-alive kind of way so common among early Christian saints and martyrs.

His dessicated remains are on view, from afar, in a really cool crypt below the main altar in the church.

We ended the day, as the sun set, in the main square where we began. The Roman Amphitheater is several hundred meters to the left of this picture.