Verona is called a city of love. Where does love live in a city?
Is it between the medieval blocks of stone of the façade of the Basilica di San Zeno, mined and assembled by the hands of unknown laborers? Or perhaps in the crypt of this church, the purported setting for the ill-fated marriage of Romeo and Juliet?
Is love in the currents of the Adige River, rushing by buoyant and light, passing through on a journey from the Alps to the Adriatic? Is it held in the hydrogen-bonds between water molecules, in the surface tension, breaking free and releasing as the river laps up onto the shore?
Is it in the crenelations of the Castel Vecchio Bridge constructed in the 1350s? But it’s a fake, a memory restored, a Castel Nuovo Bridge rebuilt in 1950 after having been destroyed by Nazis in World War II. Perhaps there is more love and care in the reconstruction, a city actively healing after trauma.
Is love in the arches of the Verona Arena, a Roman amphitheater in the heart of the city? The hopes and dreams and souls of prisoners and animals condemned echoing in the round for two millennia.
What about the metal of Juliet’s breast, slowly deteriorating atom by atom from the grimy gropes of grinning tourists?
Is it held in the lines of Paradiso, penned in Verona?
Is love in the reflection of sunlight off a glass pane or your own image visible for a fleeting moment in a storefront as you whisk by?
