In the city of Verona, on the River Adige in Veneto, Italy

 So splendid was medieval Verona that its reputation alone inspired Shakespeare to set two plays here (Romeo and Juliet and The Two Gentlemen of Verona)

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(on the River Adige in Veneto, Italy) The city of Verona became a Roman colony in 89 BCE and was the birthplace of the poet Catullus. It was captured by the Goths after the fall of the Roman Empire and was the site of Odoacer’s defeat by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric in 489. It was occupied by Charlemagne in 774. Verona came under the della Scala family (from 1260–1387), the era recalled in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It passed in 1405 to Venice, which held it almost continuously until 1797, when it was ceded to Austria. It became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.

+ Verona is one of the richest cities in northern Italy in Roman remains. The most remarkable of these,

 the amphitheater, or Arena, the third largest surviving Roman amphitheater -- and is now used for opera. Also from the 1st century CE are the Roman theater (with adjacent archaeological museum) and two gateways. The Arco dei Gavi (reconstructed in 1932) was erected in the 1st century BCE. The Lapidario Maffeiano Museum contains Greek and Roman antiquities. The city produced two great Renaissance architects, Fra Giocondo and Michele Sanmicheli. Its outstanding churches include the Romanesque San Zeno Maggiore (originally 5th century, rebuilt 1117–1227), with a brick and marble facade, a celebrated marble porch, and a triptych by the 14th-century painter Andrea Mantegna, and the Gothic Sant’Anastasia (completed from 422–81). The Romanesque-Gothic cathedral (rebuilt 15th century) contains an Assumption by the 16th-century artist Titian and one of Europe’s oldest libraries. Also notable are the churches of San Fermo Maggiore, comprising two 11th-century edifices, the upper rebuilt after 1313; SS. Nazzaro and Celso, rebuilt in 1464–83; and San Giorgio in Braida, begun in 1477 and consecrated in 1536, partially designed by Sanmicheli. Notable secular landmarks include the Castelvecchio (now the Civic Museum, Verona), built by Cangrande II in 1354; the Loggia del Consiglio (1493), attributed to Fra Giocondo; the Arche Scaligere, comprising the elaborate Scaliger tombs with Gothic canopies surmounted by equestrian statues; the Palazzo della Ragione (1193; much altered); and the Ponte Scaligero (1354), rebuilt after being damaged in WWII. The Venetian Jacopo Bellini, in the 15th century combined with that of Venice to affect the whole Veronese school. The city’s most famous painter was the 15th-century artist Paolo Caliari (Paolo Veronese), who spent most of his active life in Venice although his Martyrdom of St. George remains in San Giorgio in Braida at Verona.