Beyond the Arena, Verona holds Mantegna's San Zeno altarpiece, Pisanello's frescoed dragon, and Carlo Scarpa's Castelvecchio — a museum redesign studied by architects worldwide. Three days through Romanesque stone, Gothic pigment and living opera craft.
Italy's finest Romanesque church (1120-1138), with 48 bronze door panels cast in the 11th-12th centuries and Mantegna's 1457-1459 triptych over the high altar. The crypt holds 49 columns, each capital carved differently. Open Mon-Sat 08:30-18:00, Sun 12:30-18:00.
Scarpa's 1958-1974 reworking is a pilgrimage site for architects: raw concrete against 14th-century brick, the Cangrande statue hung on an exposed steel cantilever. Inside, Pisanello, Bellini, Veronese and Tintoretto. Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, Mon 13:30-19:30.
Verona's largest Gothic church, begun 1290. Above the Pellegrini Chapel arch sits Pisanello's fresco 'St George and the Princess' (c. 1436), a masterwork of International Gothic. The two hunchback holy-water bearers at the entrance are 16th-century.
A former Jesuit monastery built into the hillside above the 1st-century BC Roman theatre, reached by lift through the rock. Mosaics, bronzes and Greek-Roman sculpture in monastic cells, with the Adige and the old city laid out below the terrace.
The Palazzo Forti wing houses AMO, the Arena's opera museum: original set models, Zeffirelli costumes and hand-painted backdrop studies. The Filarmonico next door, rebuilt after 1945 bombing, runs the winter symphonic and lyric season.
Claimed as the world's oldest continuously operating library, with manuscripts copied here since the 5th century. Its treasure is the Codex Veronensis of Gaius' Institutes, a 5th-century palimpsest rediscovered by Niebuhr in 1816. Limited opening hours — check ahead.
Palazzo della Ragione's upper floors hold Verona's modern collection: Hayez, Boldini, Zandomeneghi, plus Futurist and 20th-century Veronese painters. The Gothic Scala della Ragione staircase in the courtyard is the finest of its kind in the city.
Open since 1890 and long the meeting point for opera singers and set designers after Arena rehearsals. The cellar list runs past 4,000 labels, heavy on Amarone and Valpolicella; wines by the glass at the marble counter start around €6.
The Cathedral holds Titian's 'Assumption' (1535) in the Nichesola Chapel, designed by Sanmicheli. Behind it, the church of Sant'Elena sits over excavated 4th-century paleochristian mosaic floors, plus the octagonal San Giovanni in Fonte baptistery.
Across the Adige, Veronetta is the university quarter — bookshops, student osterie and a mixed immigrant population that gives it a different rhythm from the centre. Piazza Isolo hosts a produce market and an antiques fair on the third Saturday monthly.
A 1570 Renaissance garden of cypress avenues, box parterres and a grotesque mask carved into the cliff face. Goethe wrote about it in his Italian Journey; Mozart visited as a boy. The belvedere at the top gives the best rooftop view of the old city.
Two churches stacked vertically: an 11th-century Romanesque lower church with primitive frescoes, and a 14th-century Gothic upper church with a wooden keel-vault ceiling painted with 416 saints' faces, plus a Pisanello Annunciation on the Brenzoni monument.