Another day was spent visiting Verona. It truly is a beautiful city and there is more than enough architecture to keep anyone happy. The Castelvecchio was my first port of call and I wasn’t disappointed, and besides being able to walk around this ancient beauty of a castle, the museum is excellent, containing enough art and weaponry to keep anyone’s interest. There was also an exhibition about Italy, about the rise of fascism, the occupation during WW2 and the post 1943 turmoil, which I found interesting. And all for 10eu. There are so many wonderful buildings in Verona, and yes, I did see the window where Romeo and Juliet did their ‘thing’, and it was absolutely clogged with instagrammers. After parting with such sweet sorrow, I headed over to Vicenza.
Vicenza is mostly a modern city, but at its core is the beauty which was old Vicenza. Centred around the magnificent 16th century Piazza Delle Erbe, there are still enough old buildings to get a feeling about the city in its heyday as gold merchants during the Venetian era.
I also travelled north to Rovereto, which is south of Trento and surrounded by steep and austere mountains. I wanted to visit Rovereto Castle, which also houses a museum dedicated to the conflict during the 1915/1918 Austro Hungarian War. There was some bitter fighting in northern Italy during these years plus alot of hardship by the civilian population, with Rovereto itself being destroyed during the conflict. The fort is well worth the visit and I really enjoyed it.
On the way to Rovereto I spent the morning riding the winding roads south of Rovereto in the Parco Naturale Regionale della Lessinia area. Brilliant. There are so many small winding roads going through the mountains. One road in particular, the SP46 from Schio to Rovereto is a superb road. It goes up, it goes down, and there are just too many bends and hairpins to count. Good tarmac, too. If you are ever in this part of the world and fancy some bendy bits, give the SP46 a go. You will not be disappointed.
