Verona : Italy
Roman monuments
Verona is famous for its Roman amphitheatre, the Arena where opera is now performed in the summer months. The Arena (whose shape and use immediately recall the Roman Colosseum) was built in the mid-1st century AD on a site which at the time was outside the city walls. The ludi (shows and games) played in it were so famous that spectators came to Verona for them from many other (sometimes very distant) places. The amphitheatre could host more than 30,000 spectators, and the most requested events were gladiators’ fights (against lions too). The round faade was originally in white and pink limestone from Valpolicella, but during the Middle Ages the Arena was used as a sort of quarry for other buildings. The first interventions to recover its functionality as a theatre were started during the Renaissance.
But other Roman monuments too are in the town, like the Roman theatre, built in the 1st century BC and retrieved in the 18th century thanks to Andrea Monga, a wealthy Veronese who bought all the houses that in time had been built over the theatre, demolished them and saved the monument. Verona hosts indeed one of the richest collections of Roman remains of all Northern Italy.
The Arco dei Gavi (Gavi Arch), dedicated to the important Roman family of the Gavii, was built in the same 1st century AD, and is famous for having the name of the builder (architect Lucius Vitruvius Cordone) engraved on it, a really rare case in the architecture of the epoque. It had been demolished by the French troops in 1805 and was rebuilt in 1932.
