Verona Arena
— pink stone the night fills with song.
Not only on a wall.
“A Roman amphitheatre on Piazza Bra, ringed by the old town. The 1117 earthquake took most of the outer wall; four arches at one corner, the Ala, are what's left of the original three storeys. The interior survived. On summer nights the bowl fills with the voice of opera; it has done since 1913, the year they staged Aida here for Verdi's centenary. Locals bring cushions. Nobody hurries home.
Verona Arena, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Arena sits on Piazza Bra in the centre of Verona, in Italy's Veneto region, about 110 km west of Venice. It dates to the first century, completed in the early imperial period around the year 30 AD, though some scholars push the date a few decades later. The amphitheatre is 152 metres long and 123 metres wide on its outer axis, with 44 rows of marble seating that hold roughly 15,000 today. Verona itself is reached by direct train from Milan (about 70 minutes) or Venice (about 75); the Arena is a five-minute walk from Porta Nuova station, and the piazza around it stays open all hours.
The amphitheatre is built of rose-and-white limestone quarried from the Valpolicella hills just north of Verona, the same stone that gives the building its faint pink cast at dusk. The outer wall, three storeys of arches, once rose to about 30 metres. An earthquake in 1117 brought down most of that wall, leaving only a fragment four arches high at the north corner. Locals call this fragment the Ala, the wing. The inner arena and the 44 tiers of seating survived. Verona's medieval government quarried the fallen stone for civic buildings for the next two centuries, so pieces of the original outer wall are scattered through the old town.
The Arena has hosted an annual opera festival since 1913, when the impresario Giovanni Zenatello staged Aida there to mark the centenary of Verdi's birth. The season runs roughly mid-June through early September, with performances starting near sunset and continuing past midnight. Aida has returned almost every summer since; productions of Nabucco, Tosca, and Carmen rotate alongside it. Audiences arrive with cushions for the stone tiers, and small candles are lit in the upper rows before the curtain. Off-season the piazza around the Arena reverts to its weekday rhythm: coffee at Caffè Filippini in the morning, the daily passeggiata in the evening. The opera office stays open all year, at the north end of the building.