Ponte Pietra

Is it worth the trip?

As part of a day in Verona, yes. It costs nothing, it lies on the way from the old town to the Roman Theatre, and like the city’s Roman gates and the Arco dei Gavi it stands in the street, with no ticket. The contrast between the pale Roman stone and the later brick is the thing to look for.

On its own it does not justify the journey. Of the five arches, only the two on the theatre side are Roman, and even those are a post-war reassembly. The Verona page covers the Arena, the theatre and the rest of the Roman town.

Getting there and what it costs

The bridge is about 580 m from Piazza delle Erbe, the site of the Roman forum, and about 1.1 km from the Arena. The Roman Theatre is about 130 m away, at the end of the bridge away from the old town, and the station of the funicular up to Castel San Pietro is about the same distance away. City buses stop at Santo Stefano / Ponte Pietra, about 90 m from the bridge. Verona Porta Nuova, the main railway station, is about 2.5 km away in a straight line. Drivers will find a small paid car park about 100 m from the bridge on the old-town side (all OpenStreetMap; distances measured from the bridge).

There is no ticket and the bridge is open at all hours (ArcheoVeneto, read 17 October 2026; OpenStreetMap).

History

The bridge stands where a ford once crossed the Adige. A wooden bridge first carried the Via Postumia, the road from Genoa to Aquileia, over the river here, built with the road in 148 BC according to it.wikipedia, and was later replaced in stone (it.wikipedia). Published dates for the stone bridge differ: en.wikipedia and de.wikipedia give about 100 BC, while it.wikipedia says only that it is older than the new town laid out after Verona became a Latin colony in 89 BC, and fr.wikipedia has a wooden bridge still standing here under Augustus. Being older than the town plan is why it does not line up with the Roman street grid (it.wikipedia). When the grid was drawn, the Via Postumia was moved onto the town’s main street and a second Roman bridge, the Pons Postumius, was built about 150 m downstream (it.wikipedia). Floods ruined that bridge in the Middle Ages; a few fragments remain (it.wikipedia; en.wikipedia). The Ponte Pietra linked the town to the theatre district on the far bank (ArcheoVeneto). Its Latin name is uncertain: some accounts call it the pons marmoreus, the marble bridge, and others give that name to the Pons Postumius (de.wikipedia; fr.wikipedia; en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia).

Floods and men damaged it again and again, notably in 1007, 1153, 1232 and 1239. In 1298 Alberto della Scala restored the tower on the town side and rebuilt the arch next to it, and in 1368 Cansignorio della Scala laid an aqueduct across it that brought running water to houses in the centre and to the Madonna Verona fountain in Piazza delle Erbe. In that period the bridge was lined with the wooden houses of boatmen and millers, with shops and inns, and a second tower closed it on the country side. The two middle arches, left in timber after earlier collapses, were to be rebuilt in stone in 1503, but the part under construction partly collapsed and was patched up in wood again; in 1508 the city asked the friar and architect Fra Giocondo to take charge, and the two arches were built in about a year from 1520, matched to the Roman ones. The country-side tower was pulled down in 1801, and the houses on the bridge were cleared in the following years (it.wikipedia).

On 24 April 1945 retreating German troops blew it up (it.wikipedia; de.wikipedia). Piero Gazzola, superintendent of monuments in Verona, chose to rebuild it as it was and where it was, with the Veronese architect Libero Cecchini; the work ran from 4 February 1957 to 3 March 1959, using as much of the original material as could be recovered from the riverbed; much of the brick for the medieval part came from bombed buildings that were being demolished (it.wikipedia).