Verona Roman Theatre and Museum

The Teatro Romano of Verona is a Roman theatre built into the slope of the Colle San Pietro on the left bank of the Adige, looking across the river to the historic centre of the city in Veneto. Constructed in the late first century BC, in the Augustan age, it predates the more famous Arena and formed part of a monumental complex that climbed the hillside in terraces, of which substantial remains of the cavea (the curved seating), the orchestra, and fragments of the stage building survive. Over the centuries the theatre was buried beneath houses, gardens, and churches as the city grew over it; it was rediscovered and progressively excavated from the 1830s onward through the efforts of the Veronese merchant Andrea Monga, who bought and demolished the buildings covering the site. Rising above the theatre is the former convent of San Girolamo, which today houses the Museo Archeologico, the city's archaeological museum. Its galleries, arranged through the old monastic cells, cloisters, and church, display Roman mosaics, glass, bronzes, inscriptions, portrait busts, and architectural fragments recovered from Verona and its territory, together with material illustrating the history of the theatre itself. From the upper terraces of the convent the museum offers some of the finest panoramas over the rooftops, bridges, and bell towers of Verona. The site preserves a clear picture of Roman provincial entertainment architecture and the way later centuries built over and eventually recovered it. Each summer the theatre returns to its original use as a performance space, hosting the Estate Teatrale Veronese, a season of theatre, Shakespeare, dance, and jazz staged against the ancient stone and the river below — a tradition the city has nurtured since the post-war festivals associated with the actor and director Renato Simoni. Quieter than Verona's better-known monuments, the Teatro Romano and its museum together reward visitors interested in the city's Roman origins and in the layered history of a site continuously reused for two thousand years.