Three-meter long ropes of pink and red padlocks reach up to the ivy-covered balcony, known as Juliet’s Balcony, in Verona. People would like to believe that this was the balcony made famous in the scene when the ‘star crossed lovers’ declare their love for each other in Shakespeare’s play. Visiting tourists close small locks on the building as a sign of their unbreakable bond to each other, and as a romantic gesture of sympathy to Romeo and Juliet, who died for love. Watching the teenagers who go into the nearby shop to buy locks or write graffiti on the street walls, or the older couples who come in to take photographs, it doesn’t seem to matter to them that the government of Verona built it in the 1930’s. All around the rose marble city there are sites like this: Juliet’s tomb is in fact unoccupied, and her house picked simply because the family name resembles Juliet’s family name, ‘Capulet’.
