Description
Juliet's Tomb is an ancient stone sarcophagus, uncovered and empty, in a crypt of the former convent of San Francesco al Corso in Verona. According to tradition, Shakespeare's heroine Juliet Capulet was buried here: whether that is true is another story, and the link is a product of imagination.
The place is the 13th-century convent of the Capuchin friars. The sarcophagus is in red marble and is reached from the cloister, going down a stone staircase to the crypt.
Its present look is due to Antonio Avena, the director of the civic museums who had already redone Juliet's House in period style. In the 1930s he wanted to give the place the air visitors expected from the tomb of Shakespeare's heroine, to offer another space tied to the legend and make it a tourist attraction.
Inside the former convent is now the "G.B. Cavalcaselle" Frescoes Museum, dedicated to the great Veronese art historian Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle.
The museum gathers mostly frescoes detached from Veronese palaces and churches, for conservation reasons. The works range from the 10th to the 16th century and include fragments of Altichiero's decoration in the Scaliger palaces, a cycle by Jacopo Ligozzi done with his father Ermanno, and frescoes by Paolo Farinati and Bernardino India, detached from the facades of Veronese palaces.
In the hall of the former church, paintings from the storerooms of the Castelvecchio museum are displayed in rotation, mostly of the 16th- and 17th-century Veronese school, with a group of works by Giovan Francesco Caroto. In the basement are Roman amphorae from about the 1st century.
One of the rooms, the Sala Guarienti, is among the venues the city offers couples for their wedding: the right place for anyone who dreams of an ending different from Shakespeare's.
Whoever comes for Juliet therefore finds a place different from what they imagined: an imaginary tomb inside a real convent, with an art collection to visit at leisure. Two bronzes of the Annunciation by Girolamo Campagna, which once stood on the Loggia del Consiglio, have also been brought here.
The place is the 13th-century convent of the Capuchin friars. The sarcophagus is in red marble and is reached from the cloister, going down a stone staircase to the crypt.
Its present look is due to Antonio Avena, the director of the civic museums who had already redone Juliet's House in period style. In the 1930s he wanted to give the place the air visitors expected from the tomb of Shakespeare's heroine, to offer another space tied to the legend and make it a tourist attraction.
Inside the former convent is now the "G.B. Cavalcaselle" Frescoes Museum, dedicated to the great Veronese art historian Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle.
The museum gathers mostly frescoes detached from Veronese palaces and churches, for conservation reasons. The works range from the 10th to the 16th century and include fragments of Altichiero's decoration in the Scaliger palaces, a cycle by Jacopo Ligozzi done with his father Ermanno, and frescoes by Paolo Farinati and Bernardino India, detached from the facades of Veronese palaces.
In the hall of the former church, paintings from the storerooms of the Castelvecchio museum are displayed in rotation, mostly of the 16th- and 17th-century Veronese school, with a group of works by Giovan Francesco Caroto. In the basement are Roman amphorae from about the 1st century.
One of the rooms, the Sala Guarienti, is among the venues the city offers couples for their wedding: the right place for anyone who dreams of an ending different from Shakespeare's.
Whoever comes for Juliet therefore finds a place different from what they imagined: an imaginary tomb inside a real convent, with an art collection to visit at leisure. Two bronzes of the Annunciation by Girolamo Campagna, which once stood on the Loggia del Consiglio, have also been brought here.