Verona

Name: Verona
Address: Italy

Italia · Roman province·Italy·Founded 89 BCE (Roman municipium)

Prosperous northern-Italy city on the Adige. Its arena, built around 30 CE, was already old when Trajan died.

A living city of around 258,000; the Roman arena still hosts a major open-air opera festival each summer, within a UNESCO-listed historic centre.

Excavation history

1834-1844

Andrea Monga (private Veronese merchant) — Monga bought the land covering the buried Roman theatre, demolished roughly thirty houses built over it, and personally directed the excavation that first revealed the theatre's remains.

1904

Municipality of Verona — The city took ownership of the Roman theatre complex and continued further excavation and restoration work there.

Notable finds

Gladiator Combat Mosaic

A 3rd-century floor mosaic from a Verona domus catches a defeated retiarius sprawled on the ground, his trident and net useless beside him, while the referee who called the bout looks on — armor and gladiator types picked out in enough detail to name each fighter's style.

Archaeological Museum at the Roman Theatre, Verona

Bronze Surgical Instruments from the Tomb of the Doctor

A Roman doctor's grave goods, buried with him rather than passed to an apprentice, held bronze scalpels and tweezers alongside two gold coins tucked in for Charon's ferry fare across the river of the dead.

Archaeological Museum at the Roman Theatre, Verona

Foundation Coin of the Verona Arena

A single bronze coin turned up during restoration work on the Arena and pinned its construction to between 30 and 42 CE, under Tiberius or the young Claudius — a full generation older than Rome's own Colosseum.

Archaeological Museum at the Roman Theatre, Verona

Open Verona on the interactive map →

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