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Romeo e Giulietta, Palladio ESTATE IN ITALIA SUMMER IN ITALY ETE EN ITALIE SOMMER IN ITALIEN Romeo e Giulietta, Palladio "What light through yonder window breaks?" ENGLISH Verona, August. A slight quickening of the heartbeat as one turns into Via Cappello, a catch in the breath as one crosses the threshold of the house where, so they say, Juliet and her Capulets once dwelt. Then the personal interpretation of the memorial stone that records the girl for whom « so many gentle hearts wept and the poets sang ». Before one, the balcony where Juliet appeared and the timeless ivy up which Romeo climbed. The visitor will find the interior recently restored. Opened to the public a bare month ago, it offers frescoed halls and rooms filied with period furniture. On its three floors, there are other balconies looking over a joyous cascade of roofs and towers. He will close his eyes and murmur the long-remembered words: « But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun... It is my lady; O! it is my love ». In Via Arche Scaligere, however, the home of the Montagues is in private hands. The exterior bears a stone with another quotation from the play. The last stop on this pilgrimage is the convent of San Francesco, home of Juliet's tomb. Empty for centuries, it has attraeteti visitors sdnce the Renaissance. And there are some 2 million of such visitors every year. Germans in the main, with strong cohorts of Dutchmen and Danes, and maniples of Belgians, Austrians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and others. A thousand charter flights and streams of trains and cars head towards Verona. The city is laid under siege by a cosmopolitan army, the like of which is seen only at Rome. Its 87 hotels and the banks of Lake Garda, some 20 minutes' drive away, with their camping grounds and tourist villages, are ali commandeered. Verona is something of a cross-roads for those who come from the north for the opera season in the Arena and the summer plays, but above ali for the sound of the voices of Romeo and Juliet. Two thousand years of history whisper among Verona's towers and balconies, her frescoed houses, her fountains, embattled parapets, courtyards, stairways, ironbarred Windows and streetlamps. In the magic, mysterious light of her evenings, the sad tale of love's sorrows may be only a thought away. This year, however, the calendar of events is wedded to reality. After an absence of nine years, the tale of Romeo and Juliet will again be told. Their voices, that have long been wafted through the background of Verona's memory, will find a living vehicle of expression in the suggestive setting of the Roman theatre. For eight nights (3rdlOth August), their tears will move the hearts of thousands of playgoers. hark back to the Rotonda; other rotundas can be seen at Warsaw and Poznan. Vicenza's « Palladian Year » centres round an exhibition in the Basilica, open until November 4th, 1973. There are photographs, drawings and other documents on display. The main attraction, however, is the extremely accurate wooden models that have been constructed from the originai drawings that Palladio always had trouble in completing since the nobles who commissioned his works often lacked the means to see them through. There is also an exhibition of 16th-century Venetian furnishings and one devoted to the work of Inigo Jones, who was the first architect to in¬ troduce Palladio's style to England. Palladio's success has been explained as follows by the organiser of the exhibition, Prof. Cevese. « Palladio offered the world a classicism that was both Greek and Ro¬ man, not learned from books, but based on the ruins that he studied and measured with such infinite care. The classical style for him meant harmony and beauty and represented the basis of bis poetic credo ». 0/3^ m C=r .M