Tourists in the northern Italian city of Verona have once again created a hole in the right breast of a statue of William Shakespeare’s heroine Juliet.
The bronze statue sits beneath the balcony in a tiny courtyard where Romeo is said to have wooed Juliet, attracting hundreds of visitors each day who flock there for a selfie and to touch the breast as part of a ritual that is believed to bring luck in love.
But the sweat from their hands is believed to have caused a small hole to develop, the local newspaper L’Arena reported.
This is the second time the abundance of touches have disfigured Juliet. In 2014, the original statue, which had stood in the courtyard for more than 40 years, was replaced with a copy costing €15,000 (£12,800), which was funded by a Catholic association.
Juliet was at the centre of controversy in December after the headteacher of a school in Tuscany slammed the breast-touching ritual as “sexist”.
“The damaged statue must be repaired, and there is little doubt about that,” journalist Enrico Ferro wrote on the local news website, il Mattino di Padova.
“However, we also need to consider the future. Is it right to continue allowing tourists to touch Juliet’s breast? Or would it be perhaps more appropriate to accept the argument by the headteacher who judged it to be sexist?”
Davide Albertini, the vice-president of an association of businesses in the area, suggested placing the statue higher up. “I would also perhaps put a letterbox beneath it to store letters from lovers,” he told the newspaper. “Maybe this would be a more romantic ritual.”
The courtyard is next to Casa di Giulietta, a renovated 13th-century building that once belonged to a noble family, the del Cappellos, who are believed by locals to have inspired the fictional family of Juliet Capulet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The balcony was added to the building in the 20th century.
Today, Casa di Giulietta is a museum with a collection of paintings, Renaissance-era costumes and the bed that featured in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. But most tourists forgo the museum for the statue.
