Discover Roman Theatre and Archaeological Museum

Verona has two Roman entertainment buildings, and most visitors only find one. The Arena is the amphitheatre, for games; the Teatro Romano, on the far bank of the Adige below Castel San Pietro, is the theatre, for drama.

It was built in the late first century BC, buried under houses for centuries, and dug out from the 1830s by a Veronese merchant who bought the buildings on top of it and pulled them down.

Above the seating, in a former convent, sits the Archaeological Museum. The theatre still stages plays each summer, which is the best way to see it.

What survives is the lower structure rather than a complete building: part of the semicircular cavea of stone seating, the orchestra, fragments of the stage building, and the arched substructures and terraces that carried the upper tiers up the hillside.

The theatre uses the slope directly, which is the Greek solution rather than the free-standing Roman one used at the Arena -- a useful contrast between the city's two Roman entertainment buildings.

Above it stand later buildings that were left in place rather than cleared: the church of Santi Siro e Libera, of the tenth century with a Baroque staircase, sits on the ruins, and the convent of San Girolamo occupies the top of the cavea.

That layering is much of the site's interest. Rather than a cleaned Roman monument, it is a hillside with a thousand years of building tangled into it.

The hill is the structure. A Roman theatre normally stands free, its tiers carried on vaulted substructures built from the ground up. This one uses the natural gradient instead, cutting the cavea into the slope in the Greek manner — cheaper, faster, and only possible because the site offered the right hillside directly opposite the town.

Terraces where the hill ran out. Where the slope was insufficient, arched substructures and retaining terraces carry the upper tiers. Those arcades are much of what survives, because they were structural enough to be reused as foundations for the houses later built over the site.

What is missing is the stage. The scaenae frons, the tall architectural backdrop that closed a Roman theatre, is almost entirely gone: it was free-standing, richly faced in marble, and therefore the first thing quarried. What you see is the seating, the orchestra and the substructures — the parts too embedded to carry away.

Recovered, not preserved. The site as visited is the product of nineteenth-century excavation and twentieth-century consolidation. Reconstructed seating carries the summer festival audience, which is why the tiers look more complete than the ruin behind them.

Is this the Arena? No. The Arena is the amphitheatre on Piazza Bra, for gladiatorial games. This is the theatre, for plays, on the other side of the river and about seventy years older.

Does the ticket include the museum? Yes — one admission covers the theatre and the archaeological museum in the convent above it, and the Verona Card includes it.

Is there a lot of climbing? Yes. The museum sits above the theatre and the route up is stepped and uneven. There is a lift for part of it; check on arrival if that matters to you.