Verona, Italy

In which I seek out the real-life historical families that may have inspired the Capulets and the Montagues, and get a sense of what Verona may have looked like in the century of Romeo and Juliet

{Verona, Italy}

I’ve given up.

It’s early morning in Verona - my first day in Italy. There is a chill in the air, but the sun is shining and the sky is a piercing blue. I’ve been wandering through the streets of the town center for a while now, but I can’t really find what I’m looking for.

Coffee. That’s all I want. Coffee and maybe a bite of something to eat for breakfast.

I pass a couple of pastry shops but they don’t seem to have anything that looks breakfasty. And I haven’t really seen any coffee shops, either - except for that one right down the street from the apartment. I noticed it on the way out, but I thought I might find something else…what was the name again? It started with an S.

Starbucks. That’s right.

I got in late last night and I’m up early this morning - I want caffeine. So, out of sheer desperation, I retrace my steps and go to the admittedly very beautiful Starbucks and buy a venti coffee and a couple of cornetti. It is packed to the gills, and I learn later that it has just opened - the first Starbucks in Verona, and one of the first few in Italy. Whether or not this is a good thing is up to Verona to decide, I guess.

As for me, I grab my cornetti and head back to the apartment, promising myself I’ll try to find something a bit more authentic tomorrow.

I eventually learn that the places where you buy coffee in Italy don’t really look like the places where you buy coffee in France, or Germany, or the U.S. They look like bars…or at the very least cafés. And that sometimes just paying isn’t enough, sometimes you have to take the receipt that they give you when you order and hand it to the bartender if you want your cappuccino. And that take-out isn’t really a thing. And that if you don’t like cornetti, you’d better be prepared to eat breakfast at home.

I learn this all in Verona.

I also have my first real Italian gelato in Verona. And my first real Italian pizza.

I learn in Verona that a spritz can be truly delicious, if you just stay away from the orange ones.

Verona is a lovely city, with a historic castle, an ancient arena, a pink-marble paved old town and a beautiful river that curves around it.

There is a palpable sense of prosperity in the air…but Verona is more than just rich, it is also rich in history, and in tradition. It is the perfect Italian city.

Which is why I feel slightly guilty that I spend so much of my time in Verona thinking about a long-dead English guy.

To be fair, I am hardly the only one who associates Verona with Shakespeare…and the city definitely leans right into its Romeo and Juliet connection.

The site that attracts the most visitors is La Casa di Giulietta: Juliet’s house, home of her famous balcony. Even though I already know the house’s connection to Juliet is tenuous at best, it’s just a few short blocks from my apartment so I can’t help running over the night I arrive. I’ll come back during the day at some point, but part of me just wants to peak through the gates while the courtyard is not swarming with tourists.

The signs of tourism are everywhere at Casa di Giulietta: there are post-it-notes on the courtyards walls scribbled with messages of love, and graffiti all over the exterior of the house. Thousands and thousands of names, and hearts…so many that they extend down the street and onto neighboring businesses.

There is a small red mailbox attached to a wall nearby, marked “Giulietta”. It is the property of the Juliet Club, an organization based in Verona that is tasked with the responsibility of answering Juliet’s mail.

Juliet gets a lot of mail these days. People - mostly women, I imagine - from around the world write to her and share their stories of love: sometimes to share heartbreak or happiness, sometimes to ask for advice. Anyone visiting Verona can drop the letters off in person, in the little red mailbox.

Every letter is answered by the secretaries of the Juliet Club. The tradition has been in place since the 1930s, when a generous man working as a guardian of Juliet’s tomb (also nearby) gathered up the various letters left by lovers at the grave and wrote heartfelt replies.

Juliet’s balcony is in no way original to the 14th century. It was added on to the existing 14th century building in the early 20th century - a simple ploy so that visiting tourists could re-enact the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.

(By the way, did you know that, technically speaking, there is no balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet? The word “balcony” would have been unknown to Shakespeare, first appearing in the English language two years after his death. “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?” As far as Shakespeare was concerned, Juliet was standing by her window and not on a balcony.)

The visit does get me wondering though: what exactly are Verona’s real-life connections with the story of Romeo and Juliet?

Romeo and Juliet is set in the 14th century. It is unlikely that Shakespeare ever visited Italy, and he definitely wasn’t living in Verona in the 1300’s…but another famous writer was. It was Verona that the great Italian poet Dante first fled to after his banishment from Florence. He lived there for seven years. In fact, it is in Dante’s Purgatorio that the names Montague and Capulet are first set in print. Dante mentions the families - although he calls them Montecchi and Cappelletti - in a list of Italy’s feuding families.

So, the Montagues and Capulets are based on two actual historical families. The names are changed slightly through the years, although even in Verona Cappelletti (or Capulet) is variously Capuletti, Capelletto, Cappello…and so on. Casa di Giuletta is actually presumed to have been owned by the Capuletti since there is a small hat carved into a wall in the courtyard ( hat or “cap” is capello in Italian). Honestly, it’s a stretch…but don’t tell that to Verona. The residence does date to the 14th century.

One morning as I wait for a bus, I notice that there is a gate to my left that looks substantially older than the surrounding buildings. I didn’t really see it at first, because there is construction going on all around it. It is the Porta Borsari, the main entrance gate to the city of Verona during the Roman Empire - and the internet tells me that this is where Tybalt slays Mercutio in a duel, and where Romeo subsequently kills Tybalt in a fit of revenge.

That, however, wasn’t in Shakespeare’s version of Romeo and Juliet.

Shakespeare based several of his Italian plays in part on short stories by the 16th-century Italian writer Matteo Bandello, and it was in his 1554 story Giuletta e Romeo that the fatal duel takes place near Porta Borsari. Matteo Bandello, in turn, had drawn inspiration from Luigi da Porto’s Historia Novellamente Ritrovata di Due Nobili Amanti (A Newly Discovered History of Two Noble Lovers) from twenty years earlier…and da Porto said that he based the story on a old Italian tale that he had heard many times before. And while it’s true that there existed several versions of star-crossed lovers stories in earlier Italian literary history, Luigi da Porto was the first to call the lovers Romeo and Giulietta, and to name their families: Montecchi and Cappelletti.

To be honest, this small street is not what I pictured when I imagined the dual duels that escalate Romeo & Juliet’s tragedy. I had always pictured them in a piazza, like the piazza I had walked through on my search for coffee this morning.

The Piazza delle Erbe is Verona’s oldest market square, situated on the site that held Verona’s forum during the Roman era. It still holds a market every weekday, where fruit and vegetable stands share space with vendors selling Italian leather goods.

Looking at the square, it’s not difficult to imagine how it would have appeared at the time of Romeo and Juliet (you just have to squint a little, just like in Venice). There is, after all, a tower to the left on which construction was started in the 12th-century, and on the building next to that Medieval frescoes. Squint hard enough and you can almost see one of Capulet’s men biting his thumb at the Montagues in the play’s opening scene.

I’ve started to realize that this is more interesting to me: to just see (or imagine, anyway) what Verona may have looked like in the 14th century. I don’t necessarily need to see “Juliet’s grave” or “Romeo’s house”, or any site associated with a historical figure that has only dubious ties to a fictional character.

And so, instead of touring Juliet’s house, or going to her grave, I visit Verona’s Castelvecchio - the “Old Castle”, constructed at just about the time Romeo and Juliet is set. And it turns out that the castle - and the adjacent bridge - share an architectural feature that gives us a clue to what the historic Cappelletti and Montecchi and the fictional Capulets and Montagues may have been feuding about it in the first place.

These unusual crenellations can be seen all around Verona - but they are especially noticeable at Castelvecchio. The castle was built by the Della Scala family - the ruling family in Venice during the 13th & 14th centuries. One of the families’ leaders, Cangrande I, was the inspiration for the character of Prince Escalus in Romeo and Juliet - and in real life was the man who provided asylum to Dante during his exile.

He was also the leader of the Ghibellines - one of two opposing political factions in Medieval Italy. The Ghibellines were supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor, while the opposing factor, the Guelphs backed the Papacy. Families showed their support for the Ghibellines or the Guelphs in a variety of ways, including the architectural choices they made. Everyone knew: if a castle was built with traditional square crenellations, the family who owned it sided with the Guelphs…but if it featured swallow-tail crenellations, then you were in Ghibelline territory. And while the cause of the feud between the Capulets and Montagues is never explicitly mentioned in Romeo and Juliet, the real-life Cappolletti and Montecchi families were on opposite sides of the warring factions: the Cappolletti were Guelphs, and the Montecchi were Ghibellines.

Near the Roman Arena in Verona are the Portoni della Bra, the traditional southern gates of the city. It was through these arches that Romeo would have fled when he was banished from Verona - and there is a plaque nearby inscribed with his words of despair.

But sitting at a café nestled between the Arena and the gates, it’s hard to think about despair. It’s a beautiful day and it’s Italy, and I’ve had enough of tragedy. I have more important things on my mind. Like gelato. And polenta. And risotto all’amarone, the local wine-soaked specialty.

Soaking up the Verona sun I sip on a Hugo spritz in an absolute sea of Aperol ones. Can you be banished for a dislike of bitter liqueur?

I hope not, because there is so much more to explore in Verona. And tomorrow I really do have to figure out how to order a proper Italian coffee…

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