Ponte di Veja

One of Europe's largest natural rock arches, hidden in a wooded valley.

A vast natural arch of grey limestone, around fifty metres wide and forty high, spanning a small valley north-west of Sant'Anna d'Alfaedo. It is the collapsed remnant of a karst cave, and one of the largest natural bridges in Europe. The cliffs around it shelter shallow caves that were inhabited from the Middle Palaeolithic onward, with finds going back more than 60,000 years.

The bridge is reached on foot in about ten minutes from a small car park on the road from Fosse, or from the trattorias clustered around the upper viewpoint. In summer, swallows nest in the rock face and their cries fill the valley.

things to do sight
A story
The painter Andrea Mantegna drew the arch in the 1450s, and it appears in the rocky landscape of his San Zeno altarpiece in Verona. Dante is traditionally believed to have walked here while in exile at the Della Scala court and used the bridge as a model for the stone arches of the Malebolge in his Inferno.