Verona begins at the Portoni della Bra. You enter through one of the two large archways, where atop sits a large clock with roman numerals. When I entered it read 11:40, and I was reminded too soon that I barely had a day to explore the city and that the following morning I would already be leaving Italy. The closer I got the more imposing the structure became. Portoni is the Italian word for gates, while in the singular form, Portone, it means doorway or entrance. I find it interesting how a word in one form welcomes, while in another it connotes a necessity to be invited or to have permission to enter. I could imagine that once, a long time ago, soldiers of Verona’s ruling family would march back and forth along the gates’ battlements in surveillance. The archway leads directly to Piazza Bra, and immediately I begin to understand why Shakespeare wrote these words immortalized behind the Portoni: “There is no world without Verona walls, but purgatory, torture, hell itself.” I had met two girls from Argentina at the hostel I was staying at, and we had, over beers the night before, decided to travel to the town of Romeo and Juliet together. So we walked through the Piazza, surveyed the restaurants (and the people) that lined the sidewalks, until we reached the walls of the Verona Arena. As I had never seen Rome nor the coliseum, I had nothing to compare this one to. New is an odd choice to describe a Roman coliseum, but that is what it was. As old as it is (a little over 2, 000 years old), it remains completely intact. I had first seen the Arena di Verona in a concert video of Il Volo. Writing about Italy feels wrong without mentioning them at least once. And as I waited in line to enter the arena, I plugged in my earphones, set the music to my Il Volo playlist, and imagined that I was in line to watch them live. Maybe one day, I thought. Once in, we climbed to the top of the arena, and from there you can see most of the city—the people walking past the shops, one or two others on their rooftops sipping an espresso or reading the day’s newspaper, and a few ladies chatting with friends on their balconies. I don’t know how many times I thought about what it would be like to be in one of those balconies, to have spent all your life in such a historic city. We walked aimlessly in search of something to eat afterwards—a pizza for me, pasta for my new friends. We passed the street full of shops, all three of us surprised that a small city like Verona would have as many signature brands as it has, until we reached another piazza. This time we were distracted not by ridiculously priced clothes in windows but by bazaar tents selling souvenirs of all kinds. It would be days later, when I was back in Arnedo, that I would realize that that very piazza was the one shown in Letters to Juliet. The Piazza Delle Erbe it is called. Here is where I ate my first Italian pizza. And I do mean that I ate an entire pizza all by myself. When in Rome or so they say. We then passed by Juliet’s house, my friends taking the obligatory boob photo with the statue of Juliet, followed by a visit to Romeo’s house, which is a private residence. We ended our day with a gelato and a stroll through Castelvecchio Bridge, where we spent an unknown amount of time simply looking out at the river.
I have long since tried to give Italy a theme song, one from among the dozens of operatic pop songs that my mother and I would listen to, sometimes for days on end. For Verona I give this: Romantica by Il Volo. I had always imagined solo travel as a way of making a new place all your own. What did it matter that about a million or more people had seen the same things or done the same things? The point was that being alone made it uniquely your experience. This is what I had imagined for myself on my first trip to Italy, something that I had been dreaming of for years. Though I had been with other people to Verona, I think we had come to a silent understanding that we were all still travelling alone, trying to find something that we could call our own. And that part of the bridge where I took this photo will always be mine, no matter how many others come and go.
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