VERONA 2017: Piazza Erbe and the House of Juliet

Let's mix things up a bit and go back to Verona!  Specifically, let's go to the center of Verona's commercial and administrative life:  the Piazza Erbe.

I love this map because it shows the most important landmarks of the city, all of which we saw.

But today's post is centered on the red numbers 2-5.

We'll start with the Piazza Erbe (#5), which was the town's forum during the Roman Empire.

Today it is a bustling market square with hawkers selling their wares.

It has 4 major landmarks:

Colonna di San Marco (1528) topped by St. Mark's Lion, symbol of Venetian rule (bottom-left).

The Fountain (1368) topped by the Madonna of Verona, symbolizing Commerce (bottom-right).

The Capitello (13th century) for ceremonies, called Tribune (top-right).

The ornate carved Aedicula (shrine) from 1410 (bottom-center).

Of the 4 landmarks, the fountain is the center-point of attraction.

The Madonna statue on top is a Roman sculpture dating to 390 AD.

We actually sat at the nearby Capitello to take it all in.

Just a wee walk away from the last column, the Aedicula shrine, we found Juliet's House (#2).

In Italian, it's the Casa di Giulietta, connected to Shakespeare's tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.

Upon passing through the gateway/entrance, you enter the courtyard.

And yes, that's the balcony of legend and fantasy...where you can even get married!

And no, we didn't even try to make it through the crowd to go up.

The real darling of the courtyard was Juliet herself.

Older men and women, all the way down to young boys and girls, wanted to touch her.

No one seemed at all embarrassed to have their turn, a good-luck ritual for the unmarried.

Did you notice the gum door behind Juliet?  Even the tree was gummed!

And, of course, there were enough love padlocks to sink the entire place.

How can you not have intrigue for such a place of Love and Tragedy!

From Juliet's House we walked back to the Palazzo della Ragione (#4), the Palace of Reason.

The medieval palace features an elegant Renaissance staircase, 

leading from the exterior courtyard to the magistrates' offices above.

The Lamberti tower attached to the palace, begun in 1172, is 275 ft. tall (top-center).  

The clock was added in 1779. and for €1 were could take the lift to the top.

How fun to zoom in on all the Piazza Erbe landmarks from above...

to say nothing for all the other landmarks we had already seen or would see later

(covering all the blue and red numbers in the map above).

You know how I always say we learn much about a people/culture from their cemeteries.

I often think the same about their rooftops!

Outside the Palace of Reason we spotted the Dante statue from 1865 (bottom-right). 

He was the medieval poet who was a guest of the Scaliger family during his exile from Florence.

Speaking of cemeteries and the Scaliger family, and last but not least...

we stood in awe of the Scaliger Tombs from the 14th century, high and lifted up.

They're a group of 5 Gothic tombs celebrating said Scaliger family.

This didn't end our day but it does end this post.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Tomorrow Astrid and I fly to Cornwall, England, for 6 days of mini-vacation with friends.

You know what that means...a gazillion more images to wade through.  HA!

The things I have to put up with!

VENICE 2017: The San Michele Island Cemetery

So, after lunch on Murano (last post), we hopped on the vaporetto for the 1.5 km. ride to the San Michele island, which we had passed that morning.

See how close it is, halfway between Venice and Murano.  (Wiki image)

But how many tourists ever visit San Michele???

You can actually see the island easily from the northern coast of Venice.

What you see is a walled island...and what's inside is a cemetery.

Have you ever heard of an island that is a cemetery?

It became a cemetery in 1807 "when under French occupation it was decreed that burial on the mainland...was unsanitary." 

The Church of San Michele from 1469 is the main landmark of the island,

the first Renaissance church in Venice.

See how close the Murano lighthouse appears behind it (top-right).

In fact, on our way to Murano that morning, look what we saw leaving the cemetery stop.

There had just been a service, after which the casket was being transported back to Venice.

Because of increasing lack of space, most bodies are now buried on the mainland.

But later, there's the Murano lighthouse again, when we left after lunch,

and then quickly rounded the church on our way to the San Michele vaporetto stop.

The entrance through the wall is immediately there upon disembarking.

And then?  Where to begin!

Because it was right there, we decided to start with the church,

passing through the 15th century cloister.

We wondered if the flowers were from the morning's service?

You know how much we love these places of worship...

like museums to us who view them without a Roman Catholic upbringing.

Then we started to wander about.

There are three different cemeteries on the island and this is the Roman Catholic section.

We hate seeing the graves for children, of course...or for anyone, for that matter.

But we knew famous foreigners were also buried there:

Ezra Pound, Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky, for example.

We found the latter two, with their tell-tale signs of music and ballet, in the Greek Orthodox section.

As you'd expect, we often came to the wall's perimeter of the cemetery 

and had to turn into a new direction....

leading us to sections totally different from the last,

like to the 7 war graves from WWI.

This is the Protestant section of the cemetery.  Can you tell?

This San Cristoforo church originally belonged to San Cristoforo della Pace, 

another island that was eventually merged together with San Michele for the cemetery.

The original church was demolished and rebuilt in the mid-19th century,

but we did not visit it.

Lining the walls to the church were more tombs...

and then the other end of the cemetery.

I'm sure we missed a lot but we got the gist, which is what we had come to see.

As we left, we had a better view of the floating statue we had seen earlier:

It's the Barque of Dante created by Georgy Frangulyan in 2007.

"The composition is based on the episode from The Divine Comedy in which Dante and Virgil

cross the river Acheron, and the water boils with damned souls.  Virgil of bronze shows Dante

to the island of San Michele, where the famous Venetian cemetery is situated."

Supposedly it's the only statue in the world standing in the water.

It was created for the 52nd Venice Biennale but will now remain there forever.

A fitting close to an afternoon at the San Michele cemetery!