Ponte di Veja Site Features

The arch itself

A single natural span of limestone across the valley, best seen from the path below, which puts the whole thing overhead.

The caves

Several shelters and cavities in and around the arch, some of them Palaeolithic occupation sites.

The walk

A short marked path from the car park down to and under the arch, through beech and hornbeam woodland.

The Lessinia setting

Karst plateau country of dry valleys, sinkholes and stone-walled pasture, quite different from the vineyards an hour below.

The arch stands at around 600 metres in the Lessini mountains, in the upper valley of the Progno di Fumane, above the Valpolicella vineyards.

The rock is karstic limestone, and the whole plateau above behaves accordingly: surface water disappears underground, there are almost no streams, and the landscape is one of dry valleys, sinkholes, caves and shafts.

The immediate surroundings are woodland -- beech, hornbeam and hazel -- with open stone-walled pasture higher up on the plateau, where the summer dairies are.

The Lessinia is also notably fossil-rich, and the region's quarries have produced internationally important fossil beds.