Verona Tourist Traps

It is not worth the time to go over there, or at least spend no more than a few moments. The graffiti is bad, and people mulling around. I also suspect that pickpockets find this a place of opportunity since so many are distracted, looking for Juliet on the balcony. Trash litters the street in front.

Unique Suggestions: Keep your hands in your pockets and be alert.

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We took a long walk away from the other city sites to come and see the San Zeno church. It held so much promise as being one of the more magnificent churches. Unfortunately when we arrived, the front door was open, but not for tourists. They are under renovation, and may be for quite some time. Now 1+ years later it could be open, but check first before taking the long trek.

I was disappointed to find out, after having traveled to some places, they were closed for "renovation". One example in San Zeno shurch, far away from everything else. We walked there, and found out it had been closed since 2004-05 for restoration. The castle Peitra on the hil across the river also is not a tour site to get into. It is permanently closed. Then Chiesa Anastasia was being "restored".
The information office should voluteer this information, but no. YOu need to ask, so do so.

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Considering Romeo and Juliet was fiction having a tourist attraction to go and see the balcony which you can pay to go into the house and stand on the balcony - i feel this is a tourist trap. I believe the balcony may have been the 'inspiration' for the book but that;s about it.

If you want to see the balcony I recommend waiting around until there is noone standing on the balcony and get your picture then.

Alternatively you can put your hand on the left breast of Juliet's statue in the garden and that apparantly is meant to bring luck and also costs nothing - just time - standing in line waiting for your turn.

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... to the front of the museum was rather pleasant and again the odd assortment of bric a brac. Bits and pieces with broken noses etc and a couple of modern pieces. Some big red lips. Are they red lips? And a wooden bench to sit on that was rather outre and post modern.

I prowled around the garden and took a few deep breaths to get over the whole experience and I certainly felt like I got my money's worth.

Then I visited the Ladies and oh damn - a squat toilet.

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... to view the tomb. Not believing for a minute that Juliet had actually been buried here. Even if she had actually existed.

I must say it smelt like I had always imagined a tomb would smell. But her tomb looked rather like a horse trough or a wash tub. Kind of odd.

Nice to be the only ones there. That can't happen very often.

Since we returned from Verona I have read of an early visitor to Verona (was it Charles Dickens? Or Mark Twain?) who viewed the tomb out in the garden where it used to be and he thought it looked like a horse trough or a wash tub.

Again, love messages scrawled on the walls and on the tomb/wash tub/horse trough.

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... with the map they gave us and it wasn't such a short walk even if we hadn't got lost more than once. The map wasn't the best map I have ever consulted.

At last we spotted a small sign pointing the way after wandering up and down Via Shakespeare for a bit saying - "It must be round here somewhere."

I managed to drag Matt past the bust of Shakespeare with the plaque intoning on about - A pair of star crossed lovers - at the entrance.

(I know Shakespeare liberally helped himself to a poem called The Tragicall History Of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke who wrote it in 1562. And Arthur had taken the story from an Italian named Matteo Bandello.)

"Look at the nice garden," I said.

Anyway we entered the museum and I had to have another laugh. A proper hotch potch. A true melange. Some awfully nice ancient frescos, some very inferior statuary and down in the basement a slew of amphorae.

Anything that needed house space seemed to be housed here.

There was a hall full of really awful religious paintings set out in a kind of maze - and Matt just hates religious paintings - The Annuciation, The Matyrdom of ... etc etc but we weren't allowed to skip it. We were the only visitors and there were two guards plus a friend in a wheelchair who made us go through the whole maze in the proper direction.

So we did. Matt is having hot fits and cold shivers by now.

5 euro to see the house (which is a very old house that does seem to have belonged to family called Capulet) and 6 euro to take the short walk to see Juliet's tomb as well.

We were the only people in the house but there was a security guard on each floor. They were having a very thin time of it. They were so bored. (But more of that later.)

There we were on the first floor in what was obviously a bog old living room. I've never been in such an old house. I was almost feeling thrilled.
Then I noticed it couldn't have been anything else but a living room. And the famous balcony was attached to it.
So how was Miss Sexy Britches Juliet whispering sweet nothings from the privacy of her bedroom balcony down to young Romeo? All her family would have been playing canasta and listening in.

"What's Jools up to?"

"Oh she is just chatting up the son of our deadly rival."

Matt gleefully informed me the balcony was added in the 1920s.

A lot of the interior of the house seemed to be held up with some sort of scaffolding.

Matt did like the bed that was used in Zefferilli's film which was on display. And the cossies.

And here were some bog old faded fragments of frescos that gave me a frisson.

So up we headed to the top floor and passed a guard that had nodded off.

Then I noticed there was a screen pulled up to an open side window and a figure behind the screen leaning out of the window and a puff of smoke spiralling up. Guard having a sly puff. We tip toed on. It would never be the best of jobs in the first place - being disturbed as you are trying to have a quiet smoko would just about put the tin lid on it.

Fun Alternatives: What is with the seven dwarves garden stools? The mind boggles.