A City for Lovers of Cities

Quick tip from the front line; if you are in Verona and plan on visiting a few museums, churches etc., get yourself a Veronacard. Eight euro for a day, or twelve for three days, it also gives you travel on the buses. I thought that it probably just worked for the dud places, those museums that usually get left out in the cold by the bigger, more famous ones, but no, any place I was looking to see is on it. Great buy that paid for itself within three venues.

As you can guess I did some sightseeing today. The Castelvecchio is impressive on the outside and surprisingly impressive on the inside too. Everything from Roman art to the Renaissance. It never ceases to amaze me how painting changed so radically in fifty to a hundred years. From the late Fifteenth Century to the early Sixteenth there is a seismic change in terms of style and talent. What amazes me still more is that both styles could even coexist as they must have done given the overlap of some of the artists. Anyhow from Jacopo Bellini to Jacopo Tintoretto there is a big jump, and both are represented in the Museum. What was a pleasant surprise to me is that a cheeky picture of a kid by Caroto ("Red Headed Youth Holding A Drawing"), a favourite of mine, was also there.

Anyhow after some lunch I went visiting the churches, San Ferma, Sant Anastasia, the Duomo. All very impressive, but each on, as usual, suffering some renovation. Actually the Duomo wasn't. Here though all the razzmatazz of the main Gothic Cathedral didn't impress me so much as the far older, simpler church also in the complex, built in 'paleo-christian' times. It has an baptismal font decorated wonderfully. Before I even got in the Duomo though, I was getting a very nasty smell. I suppose what it reminded me of was very stale wine, you know, like in the bottles the morning after the night before, the ones with the cigarette butts in them. When I went in, men were cleaning the floor and alcohol was written on a box presumably containing their cleaning fluid. However, I still think wine was somehow involved. They were dumping buckets of the stuff in a sink at the back of the church when they finished and there certainly seemed to be red streaks in that. So either wine was some sort of magic cleaning fluid for the marble floors, or there are some satanic rituals going on we don't know about.

Determined to see as much as I could, I walked on to a Roman theatre on the other side of the river. Unfortunately the main arena, the big one in the main square, is closed to visitors because of the concerts going on at the moment (something called Festivalbar). This theatre, the one I could see, was a lot smaller and part of a museum of Roman artifacts. Big enough though. You must climb the steps to the top of the theatre before you can catch the elevator to the museum, or like me, masochist that I am, climb the many steps instead. The view is wonderful though, with the Adige flowing broad and strong beneath it's beautiful bridges, and the old city running on behind that.

This museum is small, but thought provoking. A bronze head from 100AD was strikingly modern and their designs for simple glass water jugs etc. were very similar to the best of today. In one small room you could see down into a pit 18 metres deep and a 100 metres long that ran along the hillside, though covered, dug by the Romans to stop any flood water getting to the theatre.

I still haven't seen the Juliet house (from Romeo and Juliet), but it's meant to be a fraud anyhow. What isn't a fraud is the city. In the heat, with glorious sunshine and people milling about, it really is a great place. I'm not sure if it is as romantic a place as Paris, but it is a city for lovers of cities.

Very tired and sore I went for dinner and found what fast food should be about. Apparently a chain of stores, Brek is a self-service restaurant with meals from three euro. I got a huge salad nicoise, a quarter litre bottle of wine and bread for seven quid. It was only after I sat down that I noticed they also have draught beer and house wine. This is what MacDonald's might have been if it sold real food. Anyhow I ate well and stayed on in town as I was going to a concert at eight thirty.

The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra were playing Berlioz (Roman Overture), Grieg's Piano Concerto (with pianist, Boris Berezovsky) and Legendes by Sibelius. They have a lovely sound, particularly the strings, but I was a little put out when I found my seat. A wee bit high up. I was expecting complimentary oxygen. The I was put in the wrong seat and that man, you know the one, the stickler for what's right, dammit!, nearly called in the Carabinieri on me. My seat was another row back. The heat too was atrocious, though the guy sitting next to me very kindly fanned me with his programme (in fanning himself I might add). What was really annoying was that when I bought the tickets I had been led to believe there were no good seats left in the first gallery (I was in the second), and indeed the sides of the first gallery were packed. But the ones in the middle were empty. Taking my cue from some other adventurous souls, I got up and took a better seat as the lights went down. I did not suffer too much from frizzy haired woman two rows down, though I firmly believe helmets should be provided for such fashion victims. Drying my nosebleed I awaited the music.

The Berlioz started very well. I love Berlioz for just this kind of music, but I have to confess he can be a little repetitive in this overture. Certainly the orchestra didn't bring any real persuasion to the case. The Grieg was not to my ears a success. Call me old-fashioned, but the second movement should be slow and dreamy. Berezovsky went at it hard and fast, at least too hard and fast for me. His most successful movement was the last in which, of course, it pays to be hard and fast. I felt he should have been playing Prokofiev while the orchestra should have been playing Sibelius. At least in the case of the latter this was fortunate, because Sibelius was exactly what they were playing in the second half of the performance. To the accompaniment of programme fans, they finally came into their own with brilliant performances of "Four Legends from the Kalevala", including the ravishing "Swan of Tuonela". It ended well then.

I got a kebab on the way home and as I walked a group of girls (presumably from the Festivalbar concert) burst into an impromptu rendition of 'Greensleeves'. Verona is a pretty special place.