Roman amphitheater of the first half of the Ist century a.D., one of the best kept in the world. The monument - symbol of the city - was named after the Latin toponym which means sand that covered the stalls. It is the third roman amphitheater for dimensions (after Colosseo in Rome and the amphitheater in Capua), reached in a well kept condition until today. The Romans built it in the first half of the Ist century a.D., in order to perform the shows they were particularly keen: the fights between gladiators and the huntings to the wild and exotic animals.

Erected outside of the city walls (in order to make it easily reachable from the nearby areas and also to keep outside of the downtown a possible source of violence), the building has been constructed maintaining the guidelines of its axes and the drainage systems of water regarding the city road network of the roman age.

The Arena was used for centuries as source of building material to be reused in the construction of other city buildings: this is the root cause of its incompletion. The most rehashed part is the external ring of walls, already damaged in the VIth century, then destroyed from the earthquake of the XIIth century. This ring was constituted from a triple order of superimposed arcades, in tuscan architectonic style and it was made entirely by white and pink limestone of Valpolicella and in ashlar-work. The total height was of approximately 31 meters.

Today, of the outer coating only a small portion is left, the so-called "Wing" of four spans. Almost integral is, instead, the two spans inner ring of 72 stone arches, which form an ellipse of approximately 140X110 meters. Inside, from the stalls rise the steps with 44 rows, reachable through the 64 "vomitatoria" (entrances) disposed on four floors (approachable through a complex system of stairs). The cavea and the stalls have been restored in modern age.

Under the monument have been found traces of a complex system of hydraulic plants through which the water was poured in for the naumachia (water games) and to clean the amphitheater. The building was equipped probably with rich scupltural decorations but nowadays it remains little. The most important remains are conserved in the Archaeological Civic Museum. The Arena was always used for spectacular shows. After the games of the roman period, in the Middle Ages and until half of XVIIIth century took place tournaments and jousts. From 1913, the Arena has become center of the most important lyric open theatre in the world.