Verona Christmas Market

Verona holds its Christmas market under the name Christkindlmarkt, in partnership with the one in Nuremberg, with around sixty wooden chalets set in the historic centre, between piazza dei Signori and piazza Bra. The Veneto city, crossed by the Adige and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, keeps its 1st-century Roman Arena right in the centre, and it is against the Arena that the Stella cometa, a 70-metre-high steel shooting star, rises every winter. Verona Christmas market remains a late-afternoon and evening affair, when the façades of the palaces light up and the pretzel and mulled wine stalls draw the Veronese after work. If you are setting off from France, the city is reached by train via Milan or by air through Villafranca airport, and visited over a long weekend with Venice or the markets of Trentino.

Verona Christmas market, a Christkindlmarkt Italian-style

The market was born of an agreement between the city and the organiser of the Nuremberg Christkindlmarkt, one of the oldest in Germany. The 2025 edition was presented by the organiser as the seventeenth in a row, which puts the first in 2009. The formula has not changed since the start: identical wooden chalets, a selection of craft and food exhibitors, and a food menu where the pretzel and Glühwein sit next to cotechino and pearà, the Veronese sauce made with bread, stock and pepper. You will find glass baubles, turned wood, candles, toys, felt slippers, spices and straw stars, alongside the nougats and biscuits of the region’s pastry makers.

Since the first edition, the chalets have occupied piazza dei Signori, Dante’s square, ringed by the Loggia del Consiglio and the palaces of the Scaligeri, with an extension in the neighbouring Cortile Mercato Vecchio, beneath the Gothic staircase of the Torre dei Lamberti. In 2025, the market opened for the first time on piazza Bra, with around sixty chalets laid out in an L between the Arena and the Palazzo Barbieri, the town hall, and the food stalls in the square’s gardens, without leaving piazza dei Signori. The venue for the 2026 edition has not yet been announced: the two squares are five minutes’ walk apart along via Mazzini, the city’s shopping street, so the visit does not change much either way.

The Stella cometa, the nativity scenes and the ice rink

The Stella cometa on piazza Bra is the image of Christmas in Verona. This steel shooting star, designed by the architect Rinaldo Olivieri from an idea by Alfredo Troisi, springs from inside the Arena and lands on the square: 70 metres high, 82 metres long, 80 tonnes of steel and 2,500 bolts according to the daily L’Arena, which presents it as the world’s largest archi-sculpture according to the Guinness Book of Records. It was put up for the first time in 1984, for the opening of the nativity exhibition in the Arena, and was only meant to be used once. Forty years on, it comes back every year, with a tail made of a beam of light since the 2025 edition, following an incident during dismantling in January 2023 when part of the structure fell into the tiers.

The nativity scenes, for their part, have their own exhibition: the international Presepi dal Mondo show, organised by the Fondazione Verona per l’Arena, gathers nativities from museums, collections and figurine-makers’ workshops on every continent. It was usually held in the Arena; for winter 2025-2026, it was set up in the Palazzo del Capitanio, in the Cortile del Tribunale, from 16 November 2025 to 18 January 2026, every day from 9am to 8pm, for €8 entry (€7 concessions, free under 6). The venue and dates for winter 2026-2027 will need checking on the municipality’s website. The real-ice rink is in the Winter Area of the Arsenale, on piazza Sacco e Vanzetti on the other side of the Adige, and stayed open until 6 January at the last edition. On 13 December, Saint Lucy’s Day adds its own stalls on piazza Bra, with frolle, the shortbread biscuits that Verona’s children receive that day, and pandoro, the city’s Christmas cake, patented by the pastry maker Domenico Melegatti in 1894, appears in every shop window.

Dates, opening hours and practical info for 2026

The dates of the 2026 edition of Verona Christmas market are still to be confirmed by the organiser and the municipality. In 2025, the chalets were open from 21 November to 28 December, from 10am to 9pm Sunday to Thursday and from 10am to 11pm on Friday and Saturday, with special hours on 9, 24, 25 (opening at 4pm) and 28 December. Previous years followed the same calendar, from around the third week of November until just after Christmas. Entry is free; only the nativity scenes at the Palazzo del Capitanio and the ice rink are paying.

• Where: piazza dei Signori (with the Cortile Mercato Vecchio) and, since 2025, piazza Bra; the venue chosen for 2026 will be announced by the municipality.
• When: 2026 dates to be confirmed. In 2025, from 21 November to 28 December, from 10am to 9pm from Sunday to Thursday and until 11pm on Friday and Saturday.
• How much: free access; €10-30 per person for a pretzel, a mulled wine, a turn on the ice rink and a bag of Saint Lucy biscuits.
• Shuttles: in 2025, ATV lines 78 and 79 linked the outlying car parks to the centre on Saturdays, Sundays and 8 December, from 22 November to 21 December, free of charge, and several city lines were free on those days.
• Nearby: Venice Christmas market is on the same line to the east, Trento to the north on the Brenner line, and Milan Christmas market combines with Verona on the same railway axis, to the west.

The centre of Verona is a limited-traffic zone (ZTL): you leave the car in the Cittadella, Arsenale or station car parks, or in the park-and-ride car parks served by the shuttles on December weekends. The cobbles of piazza dei Signori and the Saturday-evening crowds make getting around in a wheelchair harder; the organiser says nothing about accessibility.

Getting to Verona from France

The train is the simplest option. The direct TGV and Frecciarossa Paris-Turin-Milan trains have been running again since spring 2025 on the Maurienne line, with five return services a day between them, in around six hours to Turin and seven to Milan according to seat61. A closure for engineering work in the Mont Cenis tunnel is announced from 11 September to 9 October 2026, before the market season; still, check the state of the line when you book, as it was closed for two years after the August 2023 landslide. At Milano Centrale, the trains to Venice all stop at Verona Porta Nuova, twenty minutes’ walk or ten minutes by bus from the Arena. From the south of France, you can also go via Nice and Ventimiglia, then Genoa and Milan on regional and mainline trains, which makes a day’s travel. Verona also receives the Railjet trains from Munich and Innsbruck over the Brenner pass, handy for anyone doing the markets of Tyrol and South Tyrol before coming back down to the plain.

By car, the Fréjus or Mont Blanc tunnel (toll), then the A4 Turin-Milan-Venice motorway, Verona Sud exit. From Lyon or Geneva, allow a full day’s drive, longer from Paris; the Italian motorways are tolled. By air, Verona Villafranca airport (Valerio Catullo) receives flights from Paris and several French cities depending on the season, and the ATV shuttle links it to Porta Nuova station. Milan Bergamo and Venice Marco Polo are fallback options, linked to Verona by train via Milan or Venezia Mestre.

Verona in December: Juliet, Castelvecchio and the squares

The setting of the market is worth the visit on its own. The Arena, a 1st-century Roman amphitheatre, closes its opera performances in winter but can be visited, with the Stella cometa springing out of it. Piazza delle Erbe, the former forum, remains the commercial heart of the city with its stalls, the Madonna Verona fountain and the Torre dei Lamberti, whose 84 metres you climb to see the rooftops beneath the fairy lights. Next door, piazza dei Signori and the Gothic tombs of the Scaligeri recall the dynasty that made Verona a power in the 14th century. Juliet’s House, on via Cappello, draws its queues of visitors even in the snow; the legend was set there by Luigi da Porto before Shakespeare took it up, and the balcony dates from the 1930s, which puts nobody off.

The Castelvecchio and its crenellated bridge over the Adige house the city’s art museum, redesigned by Carlo Scarpa, where you spend two hours in the warm among Venetian paintings and medieval sculptures. The Ponte Pietra, a Roman bridge rebuilt after 1945, leads to the Roman theatre and the Veronetta quarter, less busy, where the trattorias serve bollito with pearà and risotto all’Amarone, the great red wine of the neighbouring Valpolicella. For a hot drink, the vin brulé at the chalets has its Veronese version, often based on Valpolicella red; if you want to know what sets it apart from a Nuremberg Glühwein or an Alsatian mulled wine, we have gathered mulled wine and its variations in an article of its own. Verona Christmas market can thus be done in an evening, but the city asks for two full days, three if you add a morning on Lake Garda or a trip out to Venice.