History

Roman amphitheatres were functional buildings for public spectacle — gladiatorial combat, wild animal hunts (venationes), public executions, and occasional flood shows. Verona’s Arena, built in the flat land just outside the city walls of the Augustan period (the same walls whose gates are still visible on Via Leoncino and Via Diaz), was the largest building in the Roman Po plain. After the decline of gladiatorial culture in late antiquity (formally abolished by Honorius, c. 404 CE), the Arena was used variously as a quarry for stone, as a fortified refuge during the early medieval invasions, and as a site for executions and public events. The structure was maintained sufficiently to survive: the inner cavea never collapsed.

In 1913, the centenary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth, a group of Veronese citizens organised a performance of Aida in the Arena using the stone steps as seating. The production was a revelation — the space, nearly three times the size of any existing opera house, was acoustically and atmospherically suited to grand opera on an enormous scale. The Arena di Verona Festival became an annual institution and is now the largest-audience opera festival in the world, regularly selling out its 15,000-seat summer programme.