La Tomba di Giulietta (Juliet’s Tomb)

A lovely monastery crypt in Verona, Italy, with a sarcophagus said to be that of Juliet Capulet

The would-be site of Romance's most historic miscommunication—where the star-crossed lovers of Rome and Juliet ended up committing serial suicide rather than live without each other—lies within the graceful medieval cloisters of the Capuchin monastery of San Francesco al Corso.

Die-hard romantics may find this brick vaulted semi-cellar with its worn, chipped, lidless sarcophagus—believed to be "Juliet's tomb" as early as the 16th cenury, and hence subjected to hammer-weilding souvenier seekers for centuries; now protected, but filled with folded bits of lovelorn notes tossed into it from the little bifore window—rather more evocative than the crowded scene at Juliet’s House, and therfore worth the trip to the southern reaches of Verona's historic center.

Others will find it overrated and shouldn’t bother.

(On other R+J lore, the adjacent church would therfore supposedly be where Romeo and Juliet's secret marriage would have taken place.)

This monastic complex was built in the 1200s, and home in the 16th and 17th centuries to noviates and maids seeking sanctuary at a nearby convent (mostly ex-prostitutes, widows, girls without dowries, and "malmaritate," or unhappily married women who escaped their husbands). It should be noted that the original monastery was largely destoryed in 1624 when lighting struck a powder store in the Torre della Paglia, decimating the neighborhood, so most everything you see is a 17th-century reconstruction.

To make the short trek here worthwhile, there is also a small museum of frescoes.

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