Piazza Bra

This guide to Piazza Bra in Verona starts underfoot, tracing how this stretch outside the city walls served for centuries as the Foro Boario, a cattle and timber market that gave the square its plain Lombard name, from braida, an open field. It follows governor Alvise Mocenigo's 1770 decision to pave a promenade in pink Valpolicella marble, the same stone quarried for the Arena beside it, and the years it took workers to finish the job. Walk the same stretch of pink stone yourself, and try to imagine the smell it used to carry.