Verona and North Italy
An alternative tour to Rome and the Bay of Naples, yet still includes sites covering the major themes within syllabi. Flying in to Verona, and then visiting by train Brescia (Roman Brixia) and Venice.
Verona and Brescia have a wonderful array of Roman remains – temples, houses, theatres and the amphitheatre. Meanwhile Venice’s Archaeological Museum has a fantastic collection,
The programme can be shortened to include archaeological sites and museums specific to your areas of study.
After flying in to Verona and checking in you have free time to walk the streets of the historic centre, don’t miss the Arch of the Gavi and the Roman Gates of porta Borsari and Porta Leoni.
If time allows, there’s always Juliet’s Balcony too, for a more modern site, appealing to students also studying Drama or English Literature.
Dinner at a local trattoria before bed.
Day 2
Take the train for under an hour to Brescia, the Roman town of Brixia has one of the best surviving Capitolium’s, with the three rooms dedicated to the triad now a small museum space decorated with finds from the site, including the Winged Victory of Brescia.
Also included within the Brixia Archaeological Area is the Republican Sanctuary, made up of four richly decorated halls, and the Roman Theatre, in use between the first and fifth centuries AD.
After grabbing lunch head to the Santa Giulia Museum to see the Ortaglia Domus, Imperial era housing on the slopes of the Cidneo Hill in Roman Brixia, much survives, from frescoes to mosaics. Continuing outside, you’ll then see the Viridarium, set in the domus’ garden, is a recreation of the Roman gardens, using plants, trees, fruits and vegetables similar to what would have been there in the Roman period. As you walk through the Viridarium, towards the walls of the Roman city, you’ll see plenty of inscriptions, votive altars, friezes, funerary monuments and large sarcophagi.
Finally before leaving Brescia, make sure to see the newly renovated ‘The Roman Age. The City’ section of the museum. This section is made up of models of the architecture you would have visited earlier in the day, as well as all sorts of finds from across Brescia. Most famously are the bronze heads of third century emperors.
Return to Verona in the evening for dinner
Day 3
Another day, another train, this time to Venice, which takes about an hour.
Head first to the Archaeological Museum to see their impressive Greco-Roman collection, including plenty of cameos, the Grimani Vitellius, and the statue of Marcus Agrippa.
Then you have some free time to get lunch and explore the city, Palazzo Ducale is on the same ticket as the Museum, and it’s worth a look at seeing the seat of power of the leader of the Venetian Republic, and see if you can spot the bronze horses at Basilica San Marco, and work out which tetrarch is which on the outside of the Basilica.
Day 4
Eat breakfast and check out of the hotel, storing your luggage there for later, before departing on foot to see Verona’s Roman sites.
First up is the Amphitheatre, one of the most impressive and complete, it is still used to host concerts today. Before stopping for lunch, you’ll also visit the Musei Lapidario Maffeiano, full of funerary inscriptions and reliefs from the ancient civilisations, collected and brought together in the 18th century.
Once you’ve eaten lunch, head north to Verona’s Roman Theatre and accompanying museum to spot the differences between theancient Veronese theatre and the one at Brescia.
Return to your hotel to collect your luggage, meet your coach, and depart for Verona airport
Day 5
Depart on train for Ravenna in the evening of day 4, before checking in an eating dinner.
For this one night stay, you’ll be checking out and storing luggage at the hotel the next morning, before departing on foot for the National Museum, where you’ll find artefacts dating from the Augustan period all the way through to the Baroque.
Then it’s off to the Mausoleum of Gallia Placidia to admire the stunning late Roman mosaics. Not actually her Mausoleum, she was the likely patron for the construction of this chapel to Saint Lawrence.
The last visit before returning to the hotel to meet the coach is the Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra. The House of the Stone Carpets is a housing complex dating from the first to the sixth centuries AD covered with rich mosaics.
Feel free to contact us to tailor your own tour. 01342 324727
Pictures: Arco di Gavi by Andrea Bertozzi on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), Brescia Capitolium by Darius Arya on X, Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs by Nino Barbieri on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0), Verona Amphitheatre by Federico Modica – Archivio Comune di Verona on https://www.visitverona.it/en/poi/arena-amphitheatre and The Mausoleum of Gallia Placidia by Carole Raddato on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
