Visiting Romeo and Juliet's Town of Verona, Italy with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
My husband Laurent and I loved Verona, which Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) used as the setting for his play Romeo and Juliet.
Verona reaps
a fortune on this fictional love story, but we still went to San Franceso al Corso Church to see
Juliet’s tomb. When we left the museum, we helped several
groups of British ladies find their way to Juliet’s tomb, too.
The play Romeo and Juliet may have been fictional
but the domestic turmoil within Italian cities that Shakespeare described was
very real. The Italie du Nord Michelin touring guide we had gave background on
this conflict as one between the Montecchi (Montagu) family and the Capuleti
(Capulet) family. The Montecchi were
Guelphs, who supported the pope. The
Capuleti were Ghibellines, who supported the Holy Roman Empire centered in Germany.
The conflict
between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines divided cities within themselves and
also against other cities that threw their entire support behind either the
Guelph or Ghibelline faction. According
to infoplease.com, the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict affected central and northern
Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The time of
the most heightened conflict took place when Guelph-supported Pope Alexander
III (1105 – 1181) and the Hohenstaufen Emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa (1123 –
1190), who was supported by the Ghibellines, fought one another with alliances
and battles.
Medieval
history left my thoughts as the arena dating from the first century C.E. came
into view. The arena has 44 rows of
seats and can hold 25,000 spectators.
Operas such as Carmen still
take place there in the summer. Men
dressed as centurions complete with swords and women dressed as Cleopatra posed
outside the arena with tourists for photographs.
The arena is
located on the Piazza Bra. We ate an
outdoor café despite the heat that could fry an egg on the pavement. We ordered pizza with three liters of water. From the café we had an excellent view of the
arena, park, and a huge TV screen set up for the Spain-Italy Eurocup
match. (Spain won later that night 4 – 0. It was a very quiet evening in Italy Laurent
noted.)
As we walked
back to the car after lunch, I thought all had ended well for our Verona
outing.
By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Ruth Paget Selfie |
