Verona in August: The Arena and Garda

The first thing Verona did was ask me a question. It was printed on a big round opera-set drum parked on the cobbles of Piazza Bra, right under the Arena's arches: The most Italian place on Earth?

I had been in the city about an hour. It was half past seven on an August evening, the sky had gone into that rippled mackerel pattern that promises a good sunset, and the answer, standing there with two thousand years of pink-tinged stone curving away from me and a red crane swinging scenery around behind the gates, felt like it might honestly be yes.

Verona leans hard into the Romeo and Juliet business. I leaned the other way, toward the river, the hills and the food, and I think I got the better trade.

Straight into the middle

The Arena is the thing that makes Verona make sense. It is a Roman amphitheater sitting in the middle of a working square, and in August it is not a ruin at all: it is the stage of the summer opera festival, so the piazza around it fills up with set pieces, cranes, and stacked platforms, and the red gates under the arches carry very practical signs about lost and found and travel agencies. A monument with a job.

The two-tier stone arcades of the Verona Arena under a rippled evening sky, red gates below, an ornate lamp post in front, and a yellow colonnaded palazzo across the square with red cranes and round opera-set drums between them — 19:28. Opera season means the Arena comes with cranes.

From Piazza Bra I drifted north through the old town, and a quarter of an hour later I was standing in a quieter square in front of a white marble Dante. He has been up on that plinth since 1865, according to the inscription below his feet, looking down with the expression of a man who has been thinking about the same thing for a very long time. Verona sheltered him after Florence exiled him, and the inscription calls the city his first refuge. Even the cafe on the square is named after him.

A white marble statue of Dante on a tall plinth in a Verona square at dusk, the inscription below reading A Dante, lo primo suo rifugio, with an old loggia and a cafe behind — 19:44. The plinth reads "lo primo suo rifugio", his first refuge.

Down to the Adige

This is where I started liking Verona.

The Adige is not a decorative city river. It comes down from the Alps and it moves, fast and pale green, pushing white water around the bend where the old stone bridge of Ponte Pietra crosses it. I stood on the bridge for a good ten minutes just watching it go. Houses come right down to the embankment on the far side, ochre and pink, with restaurant terraces buried in vines hanging over the drop, and behind them a slender bell tower, and above the whole scene that mackerel sky slowly catching fire.

The pale green Adige river rushing past ochre riverside houses with vine-covered terraces, a slender bell tower behind them under a rippled evening sky — 19:51 to 20:04, from Ponte Pietra. The bridge is a good place to stand and lose track of time.

The Adige at dusk with a tree-lined embankment, and on the hill above the rooftops a domed building catching the last light among cypresses — 19:51 to 20:04, from Ponte Pietra. The bridge is a good place to stand and lose track of time.

Just upstream of the bridge there is a shingle bank you can walk down to, and from there you get the view that sold me on the whole city: Castel San Pietro on its hill directly across the water, cypresses standing around it like exclamation marks, old church fronts and tiled roofs stacked down the slope below it, and the river doing its white-water thing in the foreground. At eight in the evening the light turned the entire hillside gold, and I just stood on the pebbles and let it happen.

The castellated silhouette of Castel San Pietro on a cypress-covered hill across the Adige, church facades and rooftops below it, seen from a pebble bank across the river — 19:52 and 20:00. Eight minutes apart, and the hill went from stone to gold.

Castel San Pietro's hill glowing gold in low evening light above the rushing Adige, cypresses on the crest and a green theater-festival hoarding at the foot of the slope — 19:52 and 20:00. Eight minutes apart, and the hill went from stone to gold.

Dinner, and how little ground it covered

Dinner was at nine, and it set the tone for the whole trip: a tartare of hand-chopped beef with capers, sun-dried tomato and neat dots of mustard sauce, a bowl of polpette sitting in a deep red tomato sauce, and then two pastas, tagliatelle folded through a pale, tomato-light ragù, and a plate of ribbons in a creamy yellow sauce buried under a heap of crisped, deeply browned guanciale. I am describing what was in the bowls rather than naming recipes, because the bowls spoke clearly enough.

Coarsely chopped beef tartare on a white plate topped with capers and sun-dried tomato, with a diagonal line of mustard-sauce dots across the plate — 21:00 to 21:25. Two starters, two pastas, no regrets.

Four meatballs in a rich red tomato sauce served in a blue marbled bowl — 21:00 to 21:25. Two starters, two pastas, no regrets.

What struck me about that evening, looking at the photos later, is how little ground it actually covered. The Arena at 19:28, Dante at 19:44, the river at 19:51, dinner at 21:00, and all of it on foot without hurrying. Verona's old town is compact in the way that makes an evening feel generous: every walk to the next thing is already an arrival. Therefore the city became a loop we kept walking, at different hours, in different light.

A midday on Lake Garda

We left Verona for a midday, because an easy drive west there is a lake, and on that lake there is a town that looks invented.

Sirmione sits at the tip of a long thin peninsula reaching into Lake Garda, and the old town is guarded by the Scaliger Castle, a water fortress that you cross a moat to enter. Everything from here to the end of this section is Sirmione rather than Verona, and it earned the separation.

The first things that greeted us at the harbor were ducks. A whole flotilla of them, working the green water between the moored boats, two of them hauled out on a wooden jetty doing their feathers, more of them paddling in front of a yellow lakeside palazzo like they were part of the composition. August around the castle apparently belongs to them.

A group of ducks paddling across green harbor water in Sirmione, moored boats and flag poles along the quay behind them — Just before one o'clock. The harbor committee, in session.

Two ducks preening on a weathered wooden jetty above green water, mooring lines crossing the surface behind them — Just before one o'clock. The harbor committee, in session.

A few steps on, a hand-painted wooden sign on a green market cart: five lemons, three euro. The cart itself was strung with lemons hanging on twine like ornaments, a whole crate of them below, and the lake glittering between the slats behind. Lake Garda grows citrus, which still feels faintly illegal this close to the Alps, and a tin sign on the cart said Lago di Garda as if to confirm it.

A green market cart hung with rows of lemons on strings, a hand-painted wooden sign reading 5 limoni naturali 3 euro, a crate of lemons below and the lake visible behind — Five lemons for three euro, lake view included.

I should be honest about the crowds, because August on Lake Garda does not do empty. The lanes were full and every viewpoint had company. And actually it did not matter much, because the thing you come for is water and stone, and neither of those gets smaller when it is shared. The water especially: Garda around Sirmione is a pale glassy turquoise that I kept photographing and kept not quite capturing, the kind of color you associate with the Aegean and do not expect at the foot of the Alps.

Into the castle

Then the castle. You approach over the moat, a sheet of clear turquoise lake water with weed beds swaying in it, and you enter through a gate tower that still carries its drawbridge machinery on the wall. The battlements everywhere are the swallow-tailed kind, split into two little horns, and once you notice them you see them on every wall and tower in town. Somebody had also lined the moat railing with petunias, because this is Italy and a fortress is no excuse for not having flowers.

The gate tower of Sirmione's Scaliger Castle with swallow-tailed battlements and raised drawbridge machinery, reflected in the turquoise water of the moat — The moat is lake water, and clear enough to count the weeds.

Castle walls and towers rising behind a railing lined with planters of bright pink petunias, the moat water green below — The moat is lake water, and clear enough to count the weeds.

The darsena, and up the keep

The castle's party trick is the darsena, a fortified dock: a rectangular basin of water enclosed entirely by battlemented walls, built so that boats could shelter inside the fortress itself. You walk the wall-walk around it with the lake stretching away on the far side, mountains behind it, and a white grand hotel down the shore holding its terrace over the water like it has every right.

A large white hotel building on the Sirmione lakefront with a terrace of umbrellas held over the water, seen across a green lawn — The darsena: a harbor with battlements, which is a sentence I enjoyed typing.

The walled darsena basin of the castle seen from the wall, swallow-tailed battlements around still green water, the lake and distant mountains beyond — The darsena: a harbor with battlements, which is a sentence I enjoyed typing.

Then we climbed the keep. The stairs deliver you first to the wall-walk, where the main tower stands with an Italian flag snapping on top, and then to the tower platform itself, and the view from up there rearranges the whole town below you. On the way up, an arrow slit in the stair wall framed the lake and the battlements below like a keyhole, which is the medieval version of a viewfinder.

The castle's main tower framed by a tall pointed archway in shadow, a railing and sunlit rooftiles of the lower walls in between — Climbing the keep. The arrow slit is the best window in the building.

Lake Garda and the battlemented walls of the darsena seen through a narrow arrow slit in the castle's stone stairway — Climbing the keep. The arrow slit is the best window in the building.

Somewhere between the wall-walk and the top, I looked down into the moat and found a bright pink inflatable crocodile drifting alone across the weed beds, no owner in sight, just cruising past centuries of fortification with the confidence of a licensed vessel. It might be my favorite photograph of the whole trip.

A bright pink inflatable crocodile drifting alone on the weedy green moat below the castle walls, rooftops, a bell tower and cafe umbrellas of Sirmione beyond — An unaccompanied pink crocodile, holding its course past the castle.

What the top of the keep explains

From the top of the keep the logic of the place snaps into focus. Directly below, the darsena reads as a perfect walled rectangle of green water with three white boats tied up inside it and crowds crossing the bridge beyond. The rooftops of the old town run out toward the tip of the peninsula, terracotta all the way, with the campanile standing over them. Streets full of people the size of punctuation marks. And across the open water, a serious wall of mountains, the long ridge of Monte Baldo, stands over the far shore.

Looking straight down from the castle tower onto the gatehouse roof, battlemented walls and the darsena with three white boats moored inside, crowds crossing the bridge beyond — From the top of the keep, just after two. The darsena below, the rooftops, and Monte Baldo across the water.

Terracotta rooftops of Sirmione running toward the peninsula tip, a church campanile among them and Lake Garda on both sides, seen from the top of the keep — From the top of the keep, just after two. The darsena below, the rooftops, and Monte Baldo across the water.

Out through the lanes

We came down and gave the lanes one last half hour. Sirmione's streets in August are busy, there is no way around that, but they are also genuinely lovely: a red facade with two palms in front of it, a yellow house and a cypress framed through an opening in the castle wall with the moat sparkling between, and on the way out, a stone house completely swallowed by magenta bougainvillea, spilling over the door of a cafe that has sensibly named itself after the plant.

A deep red house facade with green shutters behind two palm trees and an old lamp post in Sirmione — Half past two, heading out through the lanes. The bougainvillea has clearly won.

A yellow house and two dark cypresses seen through a rough opening in the castle wall, sunlight glittering on the moat water below — Half past two, heading out through the lanes. The bougainvillea has clearly won.

The Arena in a shop window

Back in Verona that evening, two very different pilgrimages. At twenty to nine I stood in front of the Hellas Store, the shop of Hellas Verona, the city's football club, and the window did something I could not have staged: the glass held the reflection of the Arena's arches at dusk, laid straight across the yellow kit on the mannequin, the Roman amphitheater and the football shirt occupying the same rectangle of glass. Two thousand years of local pride, one shop window.

The entrance of the Hellas Store in Verona, a navy sign with the club's two-headed mastiff crest above the door and the Arena's arches reflected in the glass at dusk — 20:40. The Arena photobombing the club shop.

A yellow Hellas Verona kit on a mannequin in the shop window, the dusk sky and the arcades of the Arena reflected in the glass across the shirt — 20:40. The Arena photobombing the club shop.

Dinner that night was late, even by Italian standards. We sat in a trattoria courtyard strung with lights, white tablecloths under big canvas umbrellas, and stayed long enough to watch the place empty around us, from a full, humming garden at eleven to a handful of tables and the staff quietly resetting chairs well past midnight's approach. I took no photos of the food that night. Some dinners you document, and some you just have.

A trattoria courtyard at night, diners at tables with white tablecloths under large canvas umbrellas strung with warm lights — 22:56 and 23:22. The same courtyard, filling with quiet.

The same trattoria courtyard near closing time, most tables empty, warm lamps on the walls and greenery around the white tablecloths — 22:56 and 23:22. The same courtyard, filling with quiet.

Morning, above the rooftops

One morning we climbed out of the old town, up to a terrace on the hills across the river, and Verona did the thing every river city does from above: it explained itself.

From up there you see the Adige as a single silver ribbon looping through the terracotta, with Ponte Pietra's arches stitching the two banks together at the bend, cypresses in the foreground, bell towers marking the neighborhoods, and the Veneto plain running flat and hazy to the horizon behind it all. At five to eleven the light was already summer-white. We stood there for two minutes, took the panoramas, and understood the whole map of our walking at a glance: the bridge we stood on, the shingle bank, the golden hill, all of it laid out in one frame.

A wide panorama of Verona from the hillside, the Adige looping around the old town with the arches of Ponte Pietra crossing it, domes and bell towers among the terracotta rooftops, cypresses in the foreground and the plain stretching to the horizon — 10:54 in the morning. All that walking, one frame.

That question on the opera drum stayed with me on the train out. The most Italian place on Earth? I have not seen enough of Italy to rule on it, and Rome would have opinions. But a city that keeps opera in a Roman amphitheater, hangs its balconies with gardens over a rushing alpine river, reflects that same amphitheater in the window of its football club's shop, and keeps a castle standing in a lake a day trip away, that city is certainly making a strong case.

Verona never shouted once. It just kept quietly presenting evidence.