Letters to Juliet
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, which means it is the perfect time to tell you about Juliet. Yeah, that Juliet. You know, Romeo’s gal? The one that committed double suicide with her young lover because her parents didn’t approve.
Eek… I guess that escalated quickly, so let’s scratch the ending and focus on the loving part, shall we?
One of the really neat things about being stationed in Europe is that you often find the lesser-known things. When you come for a 10-day trip from the United States, you tend to capitalize on your time and money, so you stick to the big, cool places: Rome, Venice, Milan, anywhere in Tuscany.
Living here, however, you get this incredible opportunity to spend a day in some of the lesser known cities and pay a fun visit to Verona.
Verona is approximately an hour and a half west of Venice and makes for a beautiful day trip. Tucked inside one random side street you’ll find a long, dark corridor and behold, you’re at Juliet’s house and looking up at her balcony.
Don’t get too excited. It’s all fictional, as was Shakespeare’s play and the characters in it.
Although… the Cappello family lived in this house in the 13th century, and if I’m going to stretch it a bit Romeo and Juliet takes place in Verona and her last name is Capulet, so there may be some influence there.
But no, this particular setup is all a tourism thing. The emotions you feel when you walk through the corridor, however? Those are real.
It’s a bit magical.
Up until the last couple months, people would take sharpie markers and ballpoint pens and write quick notes to Juliet (known as Giulietta in Italian). They would stick post-its and phrases on torn-off bits of papers and shove them into the crevices of the old bricks. It was so special. Unfortunately the city took it all down and cleaned up the corridor this fall, but the romance of Juliet still exists.
People have been writing letters to Juliet since the 1930s. There are 45 secretaries all over the world that personally read and respond to more than 50,000 letters written to Juliet each year. Even in the modern age of cell phones and instant communication, hand-written letters dominate the majority of the mail received.
Long before the movie with the same name was released in 2010, people from all corners of the earth, in every language, wrote about their love story or their love loss to Juliet. The letters are translated and “Juliet” responds, keeping the mystery and allure of the power of love and hope alive.
I spent an entire afternoon reading a book I picked up at the local library in Vicenza that contained copies of various “letters to Juliet.”
Oh, my heart.
The passion, sadness, despair, openness, beauty, and vulnerability people shared as they poured their hearts out to Juliet. Don’t believe me? Check out last year’s winners of the Dear Juliet Prize 2018 (2019 winners will be announced on Valentine’s Day). It makes my Disney-fied heart happy to see the magic of love still exists.
And if you feel so inclined to also pen a love missive to Juliet, you can do so and await Juliet’s reply.
Mail your letter to the following address:
Juliet Club
Vicolo Santa Cecilia 9, 37121
Verona, Italy
