Verona part II

After seeing the Juliet’s balcony, we made our way back to the main piazza and looked into climbing one of the remaining towers in Verona but decided, with such little time, that we would be better served going to the third largest coliseum in Italy, and probably one of the best kept in the world.

Completed in about 30 AD, the Arena is one of the largest coliseums in the world, measuring 139 meters long and 110 meters wide. Today, it can seat 25,000 spectators in 44 tiers of marble seats though it used to be twice as high and likely could seat closer to 60,000 people. Home of the Ludi (shows and gladiator games), people were drawn to Verona from all over Europe to watch events. Even today, the Arena is in such good shape that it is used for theater  events, open-aired operas (where one will usually be able to find Romeo and Juliet on a warm summer night) and other public events and fairs.

We made our way into the entrance, but only after running into a gladiator waiting outside.

Just another day in Italy...

The Coliseum was massive. I don’t even know how else to put it. We made walked around the arena floor for a while before journeying to the top for pictures.

Before leaving, I tried to get a good jumping picture and this was the best one that came of it…

We wandered out of the coliseum and had enough time to check out the fountain near the coliseum before having to head back to make our way back to Torino. Some of the students, as I mentioned in the last blog, sampled some of the local delicacy- Horse meat, and loved it. There were a bunch of sights we didn’t have time to see that I would have loved to get to see, like the view from the top of the towers, Piazza dei signori, Porta borsari, ponte Scaligero and basilica of San Zeno Maggiore but hopefully, those will be sights of a later trip.

Thus concludes the Venice/Verona weekend of the trip. It was an amazing weekend and a great taste of Venetian Carnivale. Venice was amazing and would definitely be a place I would want to go back to again and Verona was stunning. I would go back to Verona and spend at least a full day exploring the city- two hours is nowhere near enough. Venice is so packed with sights that it deserves a few days at least.