Casa di Romeo

The guide to Casa di Romeo in Verona starts a short walk from Juliet's crowded courtyard, at a quiet doorway that draws no crowds at all. It explains who actually owned this house, the powerful Nogarola family, who took it over after the Montecchi were exiled from Verona in thirteen twenty-five, and follows Bailardino Nogarola signing an unromantic will inside it in thirteen thirty-nine. From there it asks how Shakespeare's Romeo ended up linked to a doorstep with no real claim on him, tracing the question back to nineteenth-century tourists who kept showing up at Juliet's house asking where he lived.