by Patricia M. Lee

t’s fun to reminisce about exciting and delightful spots traveled. Northern Italy abounds with happy memories for my husband and me. Three romantic and special places that come to mind are Venice, Verona and the island of Isola BelIa.

One of several trips to Venice found us browsing St. Mark’s Square in the moonlight, listening to the orchestras play romantic Italian sonnets and admiring the artists’ canvases displayed nearby. Authors and poets have extolled the wonders of the city. Lord Byron wrote about the Restless Romantics. Goethe, Wagner, Dickens, Gautier, James, Mann, Hemingway and others have featured Venice in their creations. We visited some of the haunts they wrote about, and took a gondola ride, as mentioned in James’ Aspern Papers. Gliding through the canals while a guitarist strummed and sang Italian love songs was the high point of our evening.

… a guitarist strummed and sang Italian love songs …

Verona was an unexpected pleasure as the lure of romance is impossible to resist. Shakespeare’s beloved Romeo and Juliet is a fascinating draw but the city has much more to offer. We strolled around the Piazza de Erbe, one of the most picturesque squares in all of Italy. Once the Roman Forum, it is now a bustling fruit and vegetable market. Medieval and Renaissance buildings surround the square such as the baroque Palazzo Maffei with its rooftop statues and the column supporting the Venetian Lion, built in 1405. The Roman amphitheater was completed in AD 30 and is the third largest in the world. The church of San Zeno Maggiore with its Rose Window symbolizing the Wheel of Fortune — figures on the rim show the rise and fall of human luck — is an inspiration.
We remember the visit to the Casa de Guilletta where Juliet’s balcony overlooks the courtyard where a statue of Juliet stands, one breast shiny from visitors caressing it for luck in finding a lover. History denotes that there really were two families who were the models for Shakespeare’s families — the Montagues and the Capulets. This romantic tragedy continues to fascinate.

Isola BelIa enchants visitors with its special beauty and charm. One of three islands in Lake Maggiore, it radiates a fairy-tale quality in its elaborate 11th century palace and Baroque Italian gardens. Because the island has the contour of a ship, the designers and architects followed that pattern. The southern gardens are the stars, and the upper terrace, the bridge and the palace, are the bow. The Borremeo family occupies 150 rooms in the Palazzo; the first floor and grottoes are open to visitors.

Rooms of interest are the Throne Room with its ornate Gold Throne, the Grand Hall where Mussolini once held conferences, and the Napoleon Room, where Napolean slept during the Italian campaign in 1797. The gardens are probably the most romantic part of the ship design. The terraces, arranged in the form of a pyramid, are somewhat like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Covered by laurels and evergreens, they make an unusual background for the amphitheater. The white peacocks with their babies provided an unusual sight as they roamed the grounds amidst the tropical and exotic plants. The mystique of the island continues to enchant.

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