Museo degli Affreschi 'G.B. Cavalcaselle' alla tomba di Giulietta

The empty marble sarcophagus at this museum in Verona never held Juliet, or anyone else, yet for five centuries visitors believed otherwise. The guide traces how a sixteenth-century novella and a local historian turned this Franciscan cloister into her supposed tomb decades before Shakespeare ever wrote the story, and how the legend drew pilgrims who chipped pieces off the stone as love charms. You'll hear about the famous visitors who came looking, including a poet who pocketed a fragment for his lover, and how battered the tomb became before the city finally stepped in to protect it. It's a story of a legend nearly destroying its own proof.