On Fair Verona

I recently travelled to Verona, and would like to take some time here to agree with Shakespeare’s assessment that it is indeed fair. And yet, I feel that one needs slightly more than a single word to describe just what an impact visiting Verona (and in my particular case, Italy as a whole) for the first time truly had on me.

The first thing that knocked me for six as I stepped off the plane was the Italian sky. England’s firmament seems the dull ceiling of a vast cavern, shadowy and enclosed, designed only to glance towards in brief discontent at the growing cloud. In contrast, Italy’s painted heavens are bright and boundless, and when one gazes upon them it feels as if their eye reaches a point at an incomprehensible distance from the earth, at the very border between the planetary and the celestial. In England, the sky is a fact— in Italy, it is a figment. It is no wonder why so many Italians in history, like the Grecians just across the water, have looked in awe upon these skies, and been inspired to consider things far greater than their own human lives.

Almost as broad, and just as prismatic in its reflections of the sunlight, is the river Adige, that curls like a shoelace right around Verona’s old town. When crossing one of the old bridges, one is instantly aware both of the glistering tranquillity of the clear waters downstream, as well as the white-crested waves rushing between the arches underfoot. The roar of the river as it tumbles between brick and over rock through to the other side is so powerful, that it can be heard from the rolling hillsides to the north of the city— and yet, just a few moments further along the riverbank, the waters calmly coruscate in the beating sun, their foaming peaks slumbering in shades of green and blue. The bridges, meanwhile, far from being grey, ugly blocks strangled by beams and cables, are so picturesque that it seems difficult to believe that they were built by any human hand— they must surely have been there since the river first began to flow, or at least had one ancient morning grown from one bank and stretched across to the other, like the roots of some gigantic, stone tree.

Encased by the azure thread of the Adige are the slanted tiled roofs of the Veronese buildings, whose orange clay is lighted ablaze in the strong rays of the Italian sun. Above these roofs wheel the slender, black, arrow-like shapes of tiny starlings, whose swirling murmurations paint shapes across the sky, and whose calls serenade the long, straight stradas at all times of the day. Their silhouettes flit around the looming, serene monument of the Torre dei Lamberti, and in and out of the ancient walls of the Arena on one side of the vast Piazza Bra. The Arena is a construct both steeped in past lives, and yet still thrumming with present activity; when we stood in its centre, surrounded by the ring of rugged steps, workmen were busy at work in the stifling heat setting up the scenery for that night’s showing of the opera Aida. Curiously, even when one stood at the base of the arena, the sounds of their hammers seemed to echo from far away; almost as if those were the noises of tools from ancient times, that still resonated around the cavernous corridors within the Arena walls.

That was the most striking thing about Verona; how calm everything was, how a comfortable hush seemed permanently set over the rooftops. Even if one is stood amidst the hustle of the market in the Piazza delle Erbe, there is no sense of pressure, no hurry, nothing that dares quicken the pace (that is, unless one is in search of shade). This serenity is especially evident within the various basilicas, whose grand, Romanesque architecture and décor both inspires a casting of the eye upwards towards the ornate ceilings, and down into quiet pondering. And it was also evident on the slopes of the green hills to the north of Verona, from which we watched the sun set over the horizon; the sky was awash with an amber haze that framed the various towers in a burning aura, then settled into a deep, lustrous purple, broken only by the pinpricks of light from the streetlamps below, and the dark, majestic outlines of the Dolomites far in the distance.

It is a wonder, in this day and age, that we still have such precious, picturesque, delicate gems as Verona to immerse ourselves in and marvel at.

Thank you for reading,