VERONA

Ciao, you’ve arrived at the right place!
Welcome to the town of the “Palio del Drappo Verde” (The Green Drape Palio). Established more than 800 years ago, in 1208, it’s the oldest organized race in the world, also described by Dante Alighieri in the “Inferno” of the “Divine Comedy”.
But why did he write here two-thirds of the “Divine Comedy”, the basic text of modern Italian?
And why did Shakespeare choose Verona for the most touching love story of all time?
And, again… why Shakespeare also set “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” here, and, at least partly “The taming of the shrew” too?
Did you know that one of Wolfgang Goethe’s first stops on his “Journey to Italy” was Verona and here, for the first time in his life, he saw some boys playing football?
The answer is in Charles Dickens’s words: “Pleasant Verona! With its beautiful old palaces, and charming country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately, balustraded galleries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the fair street, and casting the shade of fifteen hundred years ago. With its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, where shouts of Montagues and Capulets once resounded”.
Also the romantic George Byron has something to tell us: “Juliet’s sarcophagus is plain, open and partly decayed, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, as sad as her love”.
But you might prefer the French poet Paul Valéry: “Verona, with its old walls that surround it, its bridges with crenellated parapets, its long and wide streets, its memories of the Middle Ages, has a dreamlike atmosphere that inspires respect”.
The English painter and art critic John Ruskin is definitive: “Verona, the most beautiful city in Europe”.
And how about the lake Garda?
Beyond your silvery waves all is thorns (the Danish writer Friederike Brun).
“Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong, where round about the bank descendeth lowest” (again… Dante in the “Inferno”)
We wanted to make a list of monuments, beauties, things to do and reasons to run here… but we preferred to leave the word to people who write better than us.
Now… do you want to miss the chance to find out if these distinguished visitors were right?
As we run together it’ll be easy to make you understand why so many travelers fell in love with this town.