Verona- Part I

Verona is a fairly famous city (maybe you have heard of it) in north east Italy. It is one of the main tourist destinations in northern Italy, thanks to roman ruins and connections to some play by some old dude (yes, I am referring to Shakespeare’s famous story, The Two Gentlemen of Verona… oh and Romeo and Juliet, I guess that is famous too)

Having spend the morning in Venice and knowing we had to leave to get back to Torino fairly soon, we only had two hours to explore Verona, see the sights, and for some, try the local delicacy.

Verona has a very long history. It started out named Euganei and was around in 550 BC. With the conquest by the romans in 300BC, Verona was on its way to a roman colony (which it would become in 89 BC), then onto a municipality in 49 BC. The city found itself as an important city because of where it lies. Being at the intersection of several major roads, most everything had to travel through the city. As with most of Italy, a series of people conquesting each other lead to a variety of influences being brought into Verona. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths took over but were defeated by Stilicho in 403, only to be taken over by the Gothics. Verona was so important in the Gothic empire that Theodoric built his palace in Verona. In 569, the Lombards took over the city and remained in power until 774 when Charlemagne took over. The city eventually took was taken into the duchy of Bavaria. In these days, the city was immensely wealthy. Each prominent family built a tower in their honor. Quickly, 48 towers dominated the skyline of the town. The Scaligeri Family accumulated power, rising to the top in the 14^th century. They quickly took control of the government and did some pretty egocentric things. First, one will notice that for a city that had 48 well maintained, well described and documented towers, there are only a couple. When the Scaligeri gained power, they ordered all other towers be chopped off and proclaimed that their tower would now be the only tower allowed to exist in the city. With all the marble used in the towers no longer standing, the Scaligeri family paved some of their favorite walk ways in pink and white Veronan marble. The family even went as far as to change the laws so that they were the only people who could be buried within the city limits, placing their tombs atop pillars so that those in their kingdom would look up to them even in death.

Though they did some fairly egocentric things, they were massive patrons of the arts. When Dante was exiled from Florence, he was welcomed with open arms to Verona. Verona was also home to some fairly notable people, Montague and Capulet’s not included, such as a man who a few people know, Leonardo Da Vinci. The plague hit Verona hard during 1629-1633, killing 61% of the population (33,000 of 54,000) between 1630 and 1631 alone. The good kept coming for Verona when Napoleon came into town. In 1797, the civilians of Verona rose up and drove him out of town, but Verona was passed off to the Austrians. Austria was never known for being kind to the Italians and in 1866, Verona finally joined the newly united country of Italy. Fascist Italy again added to the dark history of Verona as the anti-semetic laws hit Verona especially hard. The Nazi’s invaded in 1943 and turned the old Austrian fort into a place to incinerate and torture allied troops, Jews and anti-fascist suspects.

As we got off the bus, we followed the old roman wall to the third largest coliseum in the world. We took some pictures outside and made our way down one of the Scaligeri families favorite streets, paved in the white and pink marble, and came across one of my most unexpected, and favorite sights  along this street-

A Disney store. That is right, I found a Disney store. I made my way back here and wandered around for a while. The music in the background was familiar, as most Disney music is to me, but yet was strange. I quickly noticed that it was all in Italian. It was interesting because I could understand the song very well (which is far tougher than one would imagine). I decided that a good way to teach Italian would likely be through some of the classic stories that we grew up with as children. These were stories that we listened to and loved but I also remember learning a great number of words and a good amount about sentence structure through the imitation of such stories. Instead of learning the rules in some boring classroom way, I think learning any foreign language could be made easier with the addition of children’s stories.

But we continued our way down the street and found ourselves at Piazza Delle Erbe. The fountain in the square has been going for over two thousand years (though the original statue has been destroyed and rebuilt to be Juliet).

After taking a few pictures, we made our way to the main tourist attraction in Verona, Juliet’s Balcony.

The obviously crowded square was wildly romantic and stunning to be in. The house the balcony is in now a museum, though we didn’t make it into. The people who make their way through the museum can stand on the balcony as people down below take their picture.

This was where the group split up so we made our way onto part II.