In Fair Verona

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene………….  I know it’s been done before.  In fact, I borrowed if from William Shakespeare.  If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll remember a trip that I took to Stratford-upon-Avon last year where I visited the buildings related to possibly the most famous playwright to ever grace the pages of a book.  This year, my sister and I ventured to Verona, the setting of the greatest love story ever written.  But did Romeo and Juliet really exist?

In fair Verona it seems there were two households at war with each other.  The Capuleti and the Montecchi families were involved in some sort of feud and Giulietta of the Capuleti clan was in love with Romeo Montecchi.  Tracking this pair of star-cross’d lovers down wasn’t very hard, although, if you ask my sister Pauline she’ll tell you the tale of “Romeo’s wall.”

That's me on Juliet's balcony.

Juliet’s house or Casa di Giulietta was one of the first attractions on our list and it was just as I imagined, crowded and cheesy, but nonetheless, intriguing.  By the way, if you’re thinking of writing a letter to Juliet and sticking it to the wall, you’re probably going to end up with a fine.  There are marked post boxes to put your letter in.  I guess not everything you see in the movies is true. So Casa di Giulietta is a real house and you can stand on Juliet’s balcony, look down into the courtyard and just imagine your very own Romeo lurking in the shadows. Kind of creepy, isn’t it?

The sign out the front of Juliet's tomb

A hop, skip and jump away on Via Del Pontiere you’ll find Tomba di Giulietta or Juliet’s tomb. Which I suppose means that she was real, or did they just call it that to cash in on tourism? There is a tomb and it has a big sign out the front of it with her name on, but I’m a little confused by the whole legend.

Juliet's tomb

After walking up and down a street that runs parallel to where Juliet’s house is but a few streets back, after looking at the map, going away and coming back again, I asked a local shop owner where we could find Romeo’s house. It was marked on the map, but it wasn’t until we came across a group of tourists that we realise that we had walked past it at least three times.  The private residence has a signpost outside of it, but other than that, it’s not quite as conspicuous as Juliet’s balcony.



This is Romeo's house and that's the sign post that we walked continuously missed

So, there was a pair of star-cross’d lovers in fair Verona,  but if this is the real ill-fated Romeo and Juliet, where did Shakespeare get his information from? The great William Shakespeare never left the shores of England. Does this mean that the play wasn’t his? Does it add to the Christopher Marlowe conspiracy theory? There are so many questions that I have and they can’t be answered with snippets from movies and second guesses from internet forums.  Can anyone help me?

Anyway, apart from all of the confusion, Verona is a beautiful place to visit and I wrote my letter to Juliet and posted in the box provided for simple tourists who think a dead legend has all the answers to all of the questions on life. It’s almost four weeks since and I still haven’t received a reply, but I’m going to be patient because after standing in Juliet’s courtyard and seeing the busloads of tourists that turned up and the booming Romeo and Juliet industry, I have no doubt that it’s going to take quite some time.

As for the star-cross’d lovers, evidence points to their reality, but I still wonder if Once upon a time in fair Verona a writer by the name of Christopher Marlowe stumbled across this amazing story and told his good friend William Shakespeare knowing that it would break hearts and become the greatest love story ever told, for never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.