Verona Arena

Is it worth the trip?

Yes. It is Verona’s most famous monument (Musei Civici), and despite all it has been through it lets a visitor easily grasp how a building of this kind was put together (it.wikipedia). The other Roman sights of Verona, from the theatre to the Arco dei Gavi, are on the Verona page.

Know what season you are coming in. From April to October the Arena holds performances, modern stage sets fill part of it and it cannot be seen in full, and the city publishes no visiting hours for performance days (Musei Civici). While sets go up or come down, access to the seating may be limited for safety; the level route through the ring galleries needs no special aids (Musei Civici). The city’s warning covers April to October; from November to March, entry on the first Sunday of the month costs €1.

Getting there and what it costs

The Arena stands on Piazza Bra, in the historic centre. Verona Porta Nuova railway station is about 1.4 km away, and the bus stop Piazza Bra Arena about 150 m (OpenStreetMap). Drivers have two paying underground car parks close by, Cittadella about 300 m away and Parcheggio Arena about 450 m (OpenStreetMap).

It is open Tuesday to Sunday, 09.00 to 19.00, except on performance days, and closed on Mondays. A ticket is €12; groups of 15 or more and over-65s pay €9, and 18–25-year-olds from the EU and a few other countries €3. Under-18s go free (under-14s only with an adult), as do disabled visitors with a companion and holders of the VeronaCard. Since 1 October 2026 the city’s only official online ticket office is verona.coopculture.it, and it warns that tickets bought elsewhere may not get you in (Musei Civici di Verona, read 17 October 2026; check before travelling).

History

No written source records when the Arena was built. Datings once ran from the 1st to the 3rd century; it is now accepted that it is no later than the 1st century. The tuff head of a gladiator from its decoration wears a helmet of a type that came into use around AD 10–20 and had changed by 40, which led Pirro Marconi to date the building’s completion to about AD 30, while Luigi Beschi put it in the middle of the century (it.wikipedia); the city’s museums also say the middle of the century. It was standing by AD 69, when Vespasian’s forces had to dig a new ditch south of the town because the amphitheatre outside the walls made them useless (it.wikipedia). It was built outside the walls on purpose, so crowds from the town and the countryside did not jam the centre (Musei Civici).

The games were gladiator fights and hunts of wild and exotic animals (Musei Civici). Pliny the Younger wrote of a friend who gave the people of Verona a wild-beast hunt in memory of his wife, and tombstones of gladiators have been found in the city: one, Generosus, fought twenty-seven times without defeat and died of natural causes (it.wikipedia). In 265 Gallienus built a new stretch of wall to take the Arena inside the city’s defences, and in 312, when Constantine besieged Maxentius’s forces in Verona, it served the defenders as a bastion (it.wikipedia).

After antiquity the building lived on. Its outer arches were let by the city, to prostitutes until 1537 and then to craftsmen’s workshops, and its interior was used for trials by combat, festivals and races (Musei Civici; it.wikipedia); in 1278 nearly 200 Cathar heretics were burned here (it.wikipedia). The Ala was shored up in the Second World War and tied together with steel cables in 1953–1956 (it.wikipedia). Since a performance of Verdi’s Aida in 1913, marking the centenary of the composer’s birth, the Arena has held a summer opera season, interrupted only by wars (city leaflet; en.wikipedia), and in February 2026 it staged the closing ceremony of the Milan–Cortina Winter Olympics (it.wikipedia).