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'Casa di Giuleta', the house of Juliette in Verona with its famous balcony is known all over the world. For millions of people, Verona is synonymous with Shakespeare’s famous play set there. Doubtlessly, this is the best place to get into the spirit of the timeless tragic romance, where you can glance at the famous balcony and follow local custom by rubbing the statue of Juliette on her right bosom. |
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Casa di Giulietta
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Although the story is regarded as fiction, tourists prefer to buy the fantasy of this place anyway.
Also people from all around the world love the opera and ballet shows performed inside the Arena di Verona, which is always a big attraction even for the inhabitants of Verona and the lovers of this genre.
The population of the Veronese province is of 797.229 inhabitants, but only 256.756 are residents in town and work especially in the commerce and tourism fields.
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The earliest written version of the story of the ill-fated lovers Romeo and Juliette, children of the rival Montague (Montecchi) and Capulet (Capelletti or Capuleti) families in 13th-century Verona, occurs in the Novellino (1476) of Masuccio Salernitano. It also appears in short stories by the 16th-century Italian writers Luigi da Porto (1530) and Matteo Bandello (1554). From the latter, via a French translation, it was re-told in Arthur Brooke's Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562) and also in William Paynter's Palace of Pleasure (1567). Shakespeare's principal source for his play Romeo and Juliet, written in about 1596, was Brooke's poem. The story, set in a time of actual strife between a number of noble families in Verona, has such potency that the fictional characters of Romeo and Juliet and their two families have long since acquired a strong sense of historical reality. Visitors to Verona today are shown the alleged locations of the various events in the story, including Juliet's house and the balcony which Romeo climbed in order to be with his beloved. The ancient Cappuchin church outside the town walls where the marriage of Romeo and Juliet took place is also identified, and it is there that the tomb of Juliet is located. Rubbing a "golden" statue of Juliet in the front of her house, said to have been erected by Romeo's father, Lord Montague, is believed to bring good luck.
The most easily remembered words from the play Romeo and Juliette:
"Wilt thou be gone?
It is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."
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