Destination: Italy

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Itinerary: Shakespearean Italy

The jury is out on whether Shakespeare actually made it to Italy but, with nearly a third of his plays set here, there’s no doubt about the importance of the country to the Bard’s works.



You don’t need to be a literary genius to work out Italy’s connection with The Merchant of Venice, likewise The Two Gentlemen of Verona. But did you know that The Taming of the Shrew was set in Padua, that All’s Well That Ends Well has a couple of scenes in Florence, and that Sicily features briefly in The Winter’s Tale? Rome has links to a veritable slew of big names: Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus, and let’s not forget that Othello begins in the grand republic of Venice. But perhaps the most famous are those star-crossed lovers from fair Verona, where you can actually visit a house claiming to be Juliet’s. Shame about one little historical detail: Romeo and Juliet didn’t exist!

Travelling to Italy?
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