Italy - Romeo and Juliet

Three Shakespeare plays are set in Verona: The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Romeo and Juliet. As far as I know, Romeo and Juliet are the only ones that have landmarks. These landmarks stretch across two cities.

I have been to La Casa di Giulietta, in Verona. I can't find my pictures of it. The inside is a museum, but the most popular aspects of the site are in the courtyard.

First is the balcony. It's pretty high up, and with the courtyard being stone, jumping up or down would seem risky. Nonetheless it's there, and while we visited there were two pigeons up there close together, which seemed appropriate.

There is also a statue of Juliet there. Tradition states that if you rub her right breast you will be lucky in love. We didn't do that because it seemed tacky, but we noticed then that the right breast was polished and shiny from all the rubbing. That was in 2006. In 2014 it was cracked and worn, and removed for repair.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/veronas-juliet-statue-damaged-beyond-repair-love-seeking-tourists/

There is also a place for graffiti, where writing the name of you and your love is supposed to guarantee that the relationship will last. Curators are trying to get this to where people will write on white sheets or some other material than the actual house, but at least it's not locks tearing the bridge down. There is also a wall where people can place letters to Juliet, which the Club Juliet will collect and answer as seen in the film Letters to Juliet (which was not a good movie, but some of the scenery gave some feelings.)

Also within the city is La Tomba di Giulietta, her tomb. This has become a wedding destination.

One of the places I did not make it to, but my family did, was Montecchio Maggiore. They just called it Montecchio, but if you look there is more than one.

They explained to me that Montecchio is Montague with Italian pronunciation. At first that made it seem that perhaps Verona was Juliet's city and Montecchio was Romeo's, but actually it is that Verona, in the city, was their winter home, and Montecchio was more country, so where they spent the summers. Montecchio has both a Castle of Juliet and a Castle of Romeo.

At this point you might be wondering, wait, are these stories real? It's a good question. There are very vague ties to actual history. The name of the street where Juliet's house resides, Capello, sounds similar to Capulet, but good also just mean that there was a hat maker there.

There is more than the Shakespeare play. Before the play there was an epic poem by Albert Brooke, preceded by a novella by Matteo Bandello, and before that a story by Luigi di Porta. Bandello wrote stories as if they were true, based on stories that other people told each other. It is entirely possible that there was something there, even if there are only very basic elements like a family feud, young people in love, and a suicide.

Does that make the landmarks really connected? Maybe not. People were calling Juliet's Tomb hers in the 1800's, so it wasn't just after the movie came out in the '30s and revived interest, but it still isn't the same as historical documentation that this is her, or we would know for sure that there was a her.

Even though the damage to the statue kind of annoys me, the statue is from the 1970's, so it is not an important piece of archeology.

Italy is full of very ancient history and traditions, and sometimes revival to remember the ancient history. Sometimes the path of something is hard to trace. That will be worth remembering when we get to Marostica and Parco Querini.

In Verona, you still have a Unesco World Heritage Site, with many things to see, and it is not a terrible thing to take in the house and tomb while you are there. In Montecchio,  you are still seeing castles that are over a thousand years old, whether some of their eventual inhabitants included star-crossed lovers or not.

Adjust your attitude accordingly.

http://www.verona.com/en/guide/verona/casa-di-giulietta/

http://www.verona.com/en/guide/verona/tomba-di-giulietta/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montecchio_Maggiore