CASA DI GIULIETTA

Hello everyone! I’d like to tell you about a place which I really interested in. For me this place is a precious peace of art. For the most part I am a hopeless romantic and Italy has been a place I’ve wanted to go in my whole life. This place is tear dropping and a place to portray your thought to Juliet and wait for a response.

Shakespeare’s stories are so rooted in real life that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction – just take ‘Juliet’s balcony‘. Although Shakespeare never visited Verona and his characters in Romeo & Juliet never existed, there is a 13th Century house in Verona where Juliet is said to have lived.

It once belonged to the Dal Cappello or Cappelletti family for many years. This house, a former inn, is now known as the Casa di Giulietta (Juliet’s House) and is one of Verona’s main tourist attractions. The combination of the similar name to Capulet and the fact that it has a balcony that looks out over a courtyard has turned it into ‘Juliet’ balcony’ – the actual balcony where Romeo and Juliet began to plan the events that led to their tragic deaths.

Casa di Giulietta located in the centre of Verona at via Cappello 23, it is a little difficult to find. Follow the directions to Piazza delle Erbe and once you see the graffiti covered sign post and the plaque above the archway, you will recognise it by the number of people inside the courtyard.

Address: Via Cappello, 23 – 37121 (near Piazza delle Erbe), Verona.
Price:
*Free entrance  with the Verona Card
*Entrance to the courtyard: free
*Entrance to the museum:
-    Standard € 6.00 – Reduced € 4.50 (groups minimum 20 persons, students 14-30 years old and over 60)
-    € 1.00 (Schools and young people 8 - 13 years old )
-    € 1.00 the 1st Sunday of the month for everyone (from January to May and from October to December)
Opening hours: Monday (13:30-19:30) & Tuesday-Sunday (08:30-19:30)
Telephone: 045 8034303

Entrance and Archway

Pass through the short dark tunnel, (more on that later), and you’ll find yourself in the intimate courtyard vying for a photo opportunity with fellow awe-struck visitors.

Look around in the courtyard and you’ll also find the souvenir shops with kitsch Romeo and Juliet memorabilia and young lovers are floating in heart-shaped clouds. Remember that you’re here in the romantic heart of Verona, with romance in your heart, you’ve come to see this. Juliet’s balcony.

Juliet’s Balcony

The tiny balcony is indeed picture pretty. But if you believe the folklore, the Capuleti family has never lived here and the balcony was a recent addition in 1936 by the government to attract tourism. But for just € 6.00, you can visit the interior of the house and you can stand on Juliet’s balcony and re-live the “ high-light” of the earthly life, as well as admire the furniture, the bed, and the beautiful velvet costumes worn by the actors in the Metro Goldwyn Meyer’s colossal “ Romeo and Juliet”. Besides, be prepared to rub shoulders with clichéd romantics 

reading each other passages from Shakespeare’s work.

Juliet’s Statue

Back in the courtyard, once you’ve elbowed enough photographers to secure a spot in front of Juliet’s bronze statue and you’ll see some people, particularly unmarried people, will touch Juliet’s statue in her right breast (a kind of good-luck ritual) in the hope of finding the love of their life. This peculiar tradition was probably started by someone with a fetish for cold shiny metallic objects.

Letters to Juliet

Those who enter the courtyard of Juliet’s house for the first time will be struck by the thousands of small scraps of paper which cover the floor to the ceiling. All honeymoon couples and young lovers will write down their love vows to their partner and stick them on the wall. A tradition has developed that if they leave a message with their names on it Juliet will cast a lucky spell on them and their life will be happy and their love will last for eternity.

Meanwhile, some people also seeking advice on relationships and some are written on paper meant to look like medieval parchment, while others are accompanied by photographs and drawings. Many are addressed simply to Juliet, Verona, and Italy.

There’s a problem with this, however. People stick their notes on to the brick wall beneath Juliet’s balcony and usually use chewing gum. The house belongs to the World Heritage Trust, who are concerned about the unsightly mess of hardened blobs of gum and tattered scraps of paper that are defacing the building. The Verona city council have drawn up a decree banning the sticking of notes on the walls and also the consumption of food on the premises, but as a long tradition the Council are finding it difficult to suppress – even with a 500 Euro fine for anyone found sticking anything to the walls! In the meantime removable wooden panels are in place with an invitation to the lovers to post their messages there.

Therefore, if you want to send a message you can tear a piece of paper from your spiral notebook, enter your message of love or anything you want to say and search frantically for a method to attach it to the wall, with a bit of adhesive tape of course. And then, just hope Juliet will cast a lucky spell for you or even reply your message because -in popular belief- there is also some staff called Juliet’s Secretary who always reply all those letter and send it back to the sender.

WHAT A LOVELY PLACE!

Source:

https://www.zainoo.com/en/italy/veneto/verona/juliets-house

http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/juliets-balcony/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2230962/Casa-di-Giulietta-Romantics-banned-posting-love-letters-famous-Romeo-Juliet-home-Verona.html

http://www.tourism.verona.it/en/enjoy-verona/art-and-culture/monuments-and-sights/juliet-s-house

http://www.gourmantic.com/2010/05/27/the-real-letters-to-juliet-casa-di-giulietta-in-verona/