Juliet’s House in Verona, Italy

Shakespeare’s classic “Romeo and Juliet” concluded thus: “never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” Nevertheless the city of Verona has discovered more dough than woe in the tale of these fictional “star-crossed lovers.” Some two million visitors descend each year on Verona, and many of them want to visit “La Casa di Giulietta,” a fourteenth-century Gothic palace and later an inn, which has been repackaged as Juliet’s House. Not surprisingly, the number of visitors to this self-proclaimed “city of love” typically swells during the week around Valentine’s Day. Read more: Video by Charlie Weber Narration by Blanche Yurka (Folkways, 1960) [Catalog No. CFV11122, © Smithsonian Institution, 2019]