All I knew about Verona, pretty much, was "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (which I tried out as a joke line when talking about the fact that Dale and I were going there...and believe me, as a joke it never achieved liftoff) and "Romeo and Juliet". Now I think if I ever go back to Italy, I might have to go back there.
Let's just get it out of the way: This is the so-called "Juliet balcony", attached to a house owned by the Capulet family. I'm glad I don't know enough about anything to try and estimate the date that balcony was built. I also did you a favour and didn't show the crowd down below in the courtyard waiting to pay 10 Euros to get up there and have a picture taken, or the incredibly graffiti-laden passage from the street gate to the inner courtyard. Romeo and Juliet may or may not have been completely fictional, but boy that's a story with some legs.
In retrospect, it's funny I never noticed much of anything when we got there and started wandering around trying to find where we were staying...but once we got set and went out again - !
This city is just stuffed with evidence of how often somebody took it over and fortified it. There are the remains of several iterations of empires that recognized its strategic importance to trade and transport, and in fact it's still a transport hub - that's why WE were there, after all. Just an overnighter to catch a train.
Check out the wall...there appear to have been a few sets of repairs done there over time....
Pretty much the same shot at night, with dramatic lighting.
This was the road through that fort to another bridge over the river...
The oldest part of the city is surrounded by a river that describes a big lazy arch around the whole thing, and which is crossed by several graceful old bridges.
I think this was Gaglardi bridge, had some of the art deco heroic-soldier-of-the-people-communist-fascist type sculptures at either end...
There must be ugly bridges over it somewhere that I just missed.
There are a LOT of churches, the bishop of the region has a seat here, Templars built churches and castles here.
A medieval church featuring reliquaries for people who were either really holy or really rich. No editorial offered on the "or both" option. See the sarcophagus above the entryway?
See the giant doors and the itsy-bitsy human-sized entrances in them? Do they ever open those giant ones up? Maybe for spring cleaning? On the right is a detail from a different church door - hard to see but I think it's St. George slaying a dragon, and I kind of wonder how he ended up here in northern Italy. Templars?
Here, for fun, is a clip taken from one of the bridges over that river at mid day. The visuals were intended as secondary to the sound of a lot of churches in a small area ringing their bells...every hour, every day...so turn up the volume (and I hope this works):
This Roman bridge was blown up by the retreating German army in WWII - in fact all the bridges were.
I know you're thinking "that sure looks like a repair job", and I agree....I'm just saying it was done way before WWII, at least according to "before and after" pictures on display nearby.
Like in Berlin, I am amazed that someone knew how to put things like these back together again, so they look just like the "before" photos. Not only did this bridge serve to get across the river, but it also had a role in diverting the river into the nearby "Arena" so that the Romans could stage mock naval battles in there. Divert a river, for kicks. It's like the whole Roman empire was made up of people whose Inner Teenager completely called all the shots. Think about all the excesses and a lot of the achievements of the Roman Empire, and what do you get? Nothing shouts Inner Teenager like mindless excess and runaway energy, and those guys had both in spades.
The remaining piece of the outer wall of the Arena. There's a gate number above each of the arches at the ground level, something like LXI and LXII...so you can tell your buddies where to meet up before tonight's big mock naval battle.
When we first saw the Arena, and after a few more minutes of "Gee, I don't remember them talking about THIS in high school history...", I made an assumption that the outer ring must have been knocked down by bombing in WWII. Wrong-o. The plaque explained that there was a big earthquake in 1157, and that's what knocked it down, not a lot of silly little bombs. So for about the last 900 years seating capacity in this thing has been down from 30,000 to a mere 15,000. They use it for outdoor opera, and there was one on the evening we were there.
The coveted pano shot...the outer wall fragment is over there on the left, if that helps with a sense of scale...
Looking at the people in these pictures, the evidence is that it was only me walking around with my mouth hanging open. Daytime at the Arena.
All lit up for the opera. You could hear the music out here in the plaza. Not a great shot, but you get the idea.
The residents also used all the rubble from that outer ring to build things and to pave nearby streets in what looks like marble (which reminds me: they must have some Most Excellent Laws in Italy around things like who you May and May Not Sue when whatever they've paved those streets with gets wet, because it's REALLY slippery when it gets wet. Verona may be the home of Romeo and Juliet, but it must also be The City of Broken Hips).
The Romans left other things behind, too.
A Roman gate at what was once the southern boundary of the city, built sometime around Caesar's time, I think. The city has grown to the point where this is now in the northern half of it. The street that I stood on to take this shot goes straight south, and is about the only straight street in Verona. There used to be a building above it and tunnels through the wall, but only the facade remains.
Okay, unless we go through all the centuries of trade and commerce that Verona has hosted, a lot of the pictures I have won't have any kind of context, but....I'm sticking them in here anyway, so when you go there you can figure things out for me:
See the arches beside the river? They're where barges and ships would tie up and unload merchandise into the basement of that building you can see across the street and above, which would have belonged to a fairly wealthy merchant. There were a lot of these along the river at one time.
Again, hard to see, but right in the middle of this shot are some kind of ancient ruin that we didn't get to, with everything around them built up...like they were too much trouble to tear down, and that's the only reason they're still there.
I'd like to have this house...the street that a lot of people live along just comes to an end at the gate to this house' s courtyard. You'd have your own little parade every time you came out of that gate and walked down your street.
This is in a large public square, no idea what that column with what might be a griffin on it is supposed to be about...but check out all the statues along the top of that building. This used to be city hall. No idea who they all are, either, but I'm saying you just don't get buildings made that way any more.
Another highly (but more cheaply) decorated building in that same square. I have no idea how long all that painting on the top floor walls has been there, but it's just there right out in the sun and wind and rain.
One of the streets leading off that square, with an arch celebrating...somebody. I'd like to know who, and when.
Another arch, a bridge between upper floors of two buildings facing into the square...and the single most enigmatic piece of decoration I saw anywhere. No idea at all what that thing hanging under the arch is. An elephant tusk? The last fragment of some elaborate wooden sculpture? A piece of driftwood that saved some rich 17-century guy's life? The Shadow knows....
"Emm in London" has a blog that says "The keystone of the 18th century Palazzo Carli reads satis beatus
which translates as ‘sufficiently happy’.... This building
was once the home to the Hapsburg ruler and is now NATO headquarters." Emm is focused (no pun intended) on photography, her picture is better than mine, and the ellipse in the quote above was to take out photography-related remarks. Headquarters of NATO, though? And as another aside, I'm not too sure how comfortable I am with that carved face representing the sentiment "sufficiently happy". Happy about what, I wonder. Doesn't LOOK too jolly.
This is a pretty bad low-light effort. No idea why so many of the gateways have such ogre-like images on them. I'd have liked to have made this my Facebook profile pic, but it's too poor an image. Saved from myself again.
I wonder if this building was always about money. I like my banks to be supported by classical statuary, as opposed to sound financial practices, don't you?
A detail above a church door. You're saved from me going on about the inscription because I didn't get a good enough shot to be able to read it.
Finally, my friend Dale leading the way out of town (on those treacherous yet beautiful sidewalks...(must everything be a metaphor?)) after our 18 hours or so in Verona.
