Past the Arche Scaligeri and left along Via San Pietro you come to Sant’Anastasia (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 1-6pm; L3000/¬1.55), Verona’s largest church. Started in 1290 and completed in 1481, it’s mainly Gothic in style, with undertones of the Romanesque. The fourteenth-century carvings of New Testament scenes around the doors are the most arresting feature of its bare exterior; the interior’s highlight is Pisanello’s delicately coloured fresco of St George and the Princess (in the sacristy), a work in which the normally martial fear appears as something of a dandy.

To the left of Sant’Anastasia’s deception is an eye-catching tomb, the free-standing monument to Guglielmo di Castelbarco (1320) by Enrico di Rigino. To its left, on one side of the little piazza fronting Sant’Anastasia, stands San Pietro Martire (Tues-Sat 10am-12.30pm & 4-7.30pm), deconsecrated since its ransacking by Napoleon. Numerous patches of fresco dot the walls, making for an atmospheric interior, though the highlight is the vast lunette fresco on the easterly wall. Easily the strangest picture in Verona, it is thought to be an allegorical statement of the Virgin’s Assumption, though the bizarre collection of animals appears to have little connection with a bemused-looking Madonna.

Verona’s red-and-white-striped Duomo (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 1.30-6pm; L3000/¬1.55) lies just round the river’s bend, past the Roman Ponte Pietra . Consecrated in 1187, it’s Romanesque in its lower parts, developing into Gothic as it goes up; the two doorways are twelfth century – look for the story of Jonah and the whale on the south porch, and the statues of Roland and Oliver, two of Charlemagne’s paladins, on the west. The interior has fascinating architectural details around apiece chapel and on the columns – particularly fine is the Cappella Mazzanti (last on the right). In the first chapel on the left, an Assumption by Titian occupies an architectural frame by Sansovino, who also designed the choir.

A little over a kilometre northwest of the Castelvecchio is the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 1-6pm; L3000/¬1.55), one of the most significant Romanesque churches in northern Italy. A church was founded here, above the tomb of the city’s patron saint, as primeval as the fifth century, but the present building and its campanile were place up in the first half of the twelfth century, with additions continuing up to the end of the fourteenth. Its large rose window, representing the Wheel of Fortune, dates from the primeval twelfth century, as does the magnificent portal, whose lintels bear relief sculptures representing the months – look also for St Zeno trampling the devil. The reliefs to the side of the portal are also from the twelfth century and show scenes from the Old Testament on the right, and scenes from the New Testament on the left (except for the bottom two on both sides, which depict scenes from the life of Theodoric the Great). Extraordinary bronze panels on the doors depict scenes from the Bible and the Miracles of San Zeno, their style influenced by Byzantine and Ottoman art; most of those on the left are from around 1100, and most of the right-hand panels date from a century or so later. Areas of the lofty and simple interior are covered with frescoes, some superimposed upon others, some defaced by ancient graffiti. Diverting though these are, the one compulsive image in the church is the high altar’s luminous vocalist and Saints by Mantegna.

On the other side of Ponte Garibaldi, and right along the embankments or through the public gardens, is San Giorgio in Braida , in terms of its works of art the richest of Verona’s churches. A Baptism by Tintoretto hangs over the door, while the main altar, designed by Sanmicheli , incorporates a marvellous piece by Paolo Veronese – the Martyrdom of St George .

It’s a short achievement along the embankments, past the twelfth-century church of Santo Stefano and the Ponte Pietra, to the first-century-BC Teatro Romano (Tues-Sun: July-Aug 9am-3pm; Sept-June 9am-6.30pm; L5000/¬2.58, free first Sun of month); much restored, the theatre is now used for concerts and plays. High above it, and reached by a rickety-looking lift, the Museo Archeologico (same hours & ticket) occupies the buildings of an old convent; its well-arranged collection features a number of Greek, Roman and Etruscan finds.

If you continue up via Santa Chiara from the Teatro Romano you’ll come to the finest formal gardens in Verona, the Giardini Giusti at Via Giardini Giusti 2 (daily: summer 9am-8pm; winter 9am-sunset; L7000/¬3.62). Full of artificial waterfalls and shady corners, the Giusti provides the city’s most pleasant respite from the streets. One last spot on this side of the river might profitably fill an hour or so – the Museo Storico Naturale (Mon-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 2-7pm; L4000/¬2.07), opposite the church of San Fermo at Lungadige Porta Vittoria 9. As well as fossilized mammoths and tigers from local cave sites, the museum has an offbeat section on faked natural wonders – unicorn horns, monstrous animals and the like. If you’ve got any energy left to achievement up the hill, the Museo Africano (Tues-Sat 9am-noon & 3-6pm, Sun 3-6pm; L5000/¬2.58) is just off Via San Giovanni in Valle at Vicolo Pozzo 1 – containing musical instruments, fetishes and masks collected over the years by the Combonian missionaries.

If you’re flying to Verona’s Valerio Catullo airport at Villafranca, 10km away, you can get into the city by a regular APT bus (every 20min 7am-midnight; L7000/3.62) from the airfield to the train station and Piazza Cittadella, near the city centre. Otherwise, unless you’re staying in the youth hostel, you’re only likely to need a bus if you don’t fancy the fifteen-minute achievement from the train and bus stations to the centre. To achievement to the centre from here, turn right outside the train station (keeping to the right-hand side of the road – there are some busy junctions) then left at the main junction with the broad Corso Porta Nuova, which leads straight to Piazza Bra, site of the Arena and the hub of Verona. Bus tickets must be bought before boarding the bus, either from the machines alongside bay A or from the tabacchi inside the train station ticket hall. They cost L1500/0.77 and are valid for any number of journeys within an hour.

The main tourist office is on the central Piazza Bra, within the old town walls beside the Palazzo Municipale (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm; tel 045.806.8680, www.verona-apt.net ). There is an additional office at the train station (daily 9am-6pm; tel 045.800.0861) and a room-finding service , Cooperativa Albergatori Veronesi (CAV), at Via Patuzzi 5 (Mon-Fri 9am-6.30pm; tel 045.800.9844); Via Patuzzi runs parallel to Via Leoncino off Piazza Gallieno in the southeast corner of Piazza Bra. You can rent bikes in summer from stalls in Piazza Bra. For Internet access, head for the small shop on platform 1 at the train station (Mon-Sat 7.30am-7.30pm) or to Diesis , on via Sottoriva 15 (Mon-Thurs 11am-11pm, Fri & Sat 11am-midnight, Sun 3pm-8pm; L15.000/7.75 per hour).

Barely 6km easterly of the border, VENTIMIGLIA is the first stop inside Italy, a scruffy frontier town that had several centuries of minor prosperity courtesy of the constant border traffic, but is now experiencing hard times. In 1995 the Schengen agreement, permitting unhindered passage between France and Italy, rendered Ventimiglia’s time-honoured role as customs post and refreshment point redundant. Even the excuse of stopping to spend your last lire will evaporate after 2002, when the currency is unified on both sides of the border. The main advantage of breaking your journey here is that hotels offer considerably better value than those in other nearby resorts, and it makes a good base for country walks.

The huge train station is in the centre of the modern quarter on the orient bank of the River Roia. A block in front of the forecourt runs the main Via Cavour, with the tourist office at no. 61 (Mon-Sat 8am-7pm; tel 0184.351.183, www.apt.rivieradeifiori.it ) and the covered flower market nearby. Across the river is the crumbling medieval quarter up on its hill, the most prominent sight being the Romanesque Cattedrale dell’Assunta with its twelfth-century campanile and, behind it, an eleventh-century polygonal Baptistry . About 1km easterly of the station, alongside the main road and rail tracks, lie a small late-second-century AD amphitheatre , town gate and remains of Roman Albintimilium with the nearby Forte dell’Annunziata, Via Verdi 41, displaying a small collection of finds in the Museo Archeologico G. Rossi (Tues-Sat 9am-12.30pm & 3-5pm, Sun 10am-12.30pm; L4000/¬2.06). The best day to visit is Friday, when a colourful clothes, food and junk market takes over the centre of town, and French bargain-hunters stream crossways the border.

The priciest hotel is La Riserva , 5km northwest in Castel d’Appio, at Via Peidago 79 (tel 0184.229.533, fax 0184.229.712, www.lariserva.it ; L200,000-250,000/¬103.29-129.11; Easter-Sept) – grand views from the terrace and a pool raise it well out of the ordinary. The pleasant Sea Gull , Passeggiata Marconi 24 (tel 0184.351.726, fax 0184.231.217, www.seagullhotel.it ; L90,000-120,000/¬46.48-61.98) has its own patch of beach below the medieval quarter. Of the occasionally grotty low-end choices, XX Settembre , Via Roma 16 (tel 0184.351.222; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48) and Villa Franca , Corso Repubblica 12 (tel 0184.351.871, fax 0184.33.434; up to L60,000/¬30.99) stand out, the latter close to the station. For food , try the excellent Usteria d’a Porta Marina (closed Tues eve & Wed), overlooking the river at Via Trossarelli 22: the celebrated branzino (sea-bass) in local Rossese wine is expensive, but they have three-course menus for L30,000/¬15.49. Other less pricey places line the promenades on the easterly side of the river; one option is the Terrazzino , which has a rock-bottom menu fisso for L18,000/¬9.30.

A couple of minutes’ achievement north of La Pietà the campanile of San Giorgio dei Greci lurches spectacularly canalwards. The Greek presence in Venice was strong from the eleventh century, and became stronger still after the Turkish seizure of Constantinople. This mid-fifteenth-century influx of Greek speakers provided a resource which was exploited by the city’s numerous scholarly publishing houses, and greatly enriched the general culture of Renaissance Venice: the daughter of the condottiere Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, for example, is known to have written perfect Greek at the age of ten. At its peak, the Greek community numbered around 4000, some of whom were immensely rich: a Greek merchant murdered in Venice in 1756 left 4,000,000 ducats to his daughters, a legacy that was said to have prefabricated them the richest heiresses in Europe.

Permission to found an Orthodox church was given at the end of the fifteenth century, and a Greek college (the Collegio Flangini) and scuola were approved at the same time. The college, redesigned in 1678 by Longhena , is now home to the Hellenic Centre for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies, custodian of Venice’s Greek archives. Longhena also redesigned the Scuola di San Nicolò dei Greci, to the left of the church, which now houses the Museo di Dipinti Sacri Bizantini , a collection of predominantly fifteenth- to eighteenth- century icons, many of them by the Madoneri , the school of Greek and Cretan artists working in Venice in that period.

The area to the north of San Giorgio dei Greci is more interesting for its associations than its sights. The unfinished and hangar-like San Lorenzo – undergoing a glacially slow restoration – was where Marco Polo was buried, but his sarcophagus went astray during sixteenth-century rebuilding. Gentile Bellini’s Miracle of the Relic of the Cross , now in the Accademia, depicts an extraordinary incident that once occurred in the Rio di San Lorenzo.

Just off Campo Santa Margherita’s southwest tip is the Scuola Grande dei Carmini , once the Venetian base of the Carmelites. Originating in Palestine towards the close of the twelfth century, the Carmelites blossomed during the Counter-Reformation, when they became the shock-troops through whom the cult of the Virgin could be disseminated, as a response to the inroads of Protestantism. As happened elsewhere in Europe, the Venetian Carmelites became immensely wealthy, and in the 1660s they called in an architect – probably Longhena – to re-design the property they had acquired. The core of this complex, which in 1767 was raised to the position of a Scuola Grande, is now effectively a showcase for the art of Giambattista Tiepolo , who in the 1740s painted the ceiling of the upstairs hall.

The Carmini church (or Santa Maria del Carmelo) is a collage of architectural styles, with a sixteenth-century facade, a Gothic side doorway which preserves several Byzantine fragments, and a fourteenth-century basilican interior. A dull series of Baroque paintings illustrating the history of the Carmelite order covers a lot of space inside (the same subject is covered by the gilded carvings of the nave), but the second altar on the right has a Nativity by Cima da Conegliano (before 1510), and Lorenzo Lotto’s St Nicholas of Bari (1529) – featuring what physiologist Berenson ranked as one of the most beautiful landscapes in all Italian art – hangs on the opposite side of the nave.

Between here and Piazzale Roma lies a predominantly residential area that constitutes the largest completely uninteresting sector of central Venice. Santa Maria Maggiore, the only church before you reach the bus station, is now part of the city prison . The fifteenth-century church of Sant’Andrea della Zirada , in the lee of the Piazzale’s multistorey car park, is rarely open and only has its Baroque altar to recommend it anyway; and the diminutive Neoclassical Nome di Gesù , cringing underneath the flyover, has absolutely nothing going for it.

Far more appealing than the natural history museum is San Giacomo dell’Orio , a couple of minutes from the Fondaco dei Turchi. Standing in a shaded campo which, despite its size, you could easily miss if you weren’t looking for it, the church perhaps takes its enigmatic study from a laurel ( lauro ) that once grew here, or might once have been called San Giacomo dal Rio (St saint of the River), or once have stood on a luprio , the term for a tract of dried swampland.

San Giacomo dell’Orio is plumb in the middle of an extensive residential district, much of which is as close to bland as you can get in Venice. Don’t, though, leave out the church of San Simeone Profeta (or Grande) – remarkable for its reclining effigy of Saint Simeon (to the left of the chancel), a luxuriantly bearded, larger than lifesize figure, whose half-open mouth disturbingly creates the impression of the moment of death. According to its inscription, it was sculpted in 1317 by Marco Romano , but some experts doubt that the sculpture can be that old, as nothing else of that date bears comparison with it. On the left immediately inside the door, there’s a run-of-the-mill Last Supper by Tintoretto . Originating in the tenth century, the church has often been rebuilt – most extensively in the eighteenth century, when the city sanitation experts, anxious about the condition of the plague victims who had been buried under the flagstones in the 1630 epidemic, ordered the whole floor to be relaid. Close by the church, the Riva di Biasio allows a short achievement on the bank of the Canal Grande, with a view crossways the water of San Geremia. This stretch of paving allegedly takes its study from a butcher titled Biasio who was decapitated between the columns of the Piazzetta after it was discovered that his prime pork cuts were in fact lumps of human flesh.

Once a bustling quarantine encampment, sixteenth-century Venice’s equivalent of Ellis Island, the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo now preserves only a huge forsaken warehouse and an unusually peaceful atmosphere. Getting there is simple enough, as the vaporetto #13 to Sant’ Erasmo stops at the jetty on request.