Tourists in Verona face £400 fines for sticking love notes beneath Juliet's balcony

Rex

Verona is clamping down on star-crossed tourists who visit Juliet's balcony and leave love notes in the courtyard by handing out fines of up to 500 euros to anyone caught sticking chewing gum and Post-it notes on the walls.

The Daily Telegraph reports that the romantic World Heritage-listed city's most popular attraction has been defaced as a result of tattered scraps of paper and hardened blobs of gum causing the unsightly mess.

The new decree, being drawn up by Verona city council, will prohibit chewing gum and adhesive Post-it notes from being stuck on the walls. The consumption of food and drink in the courtyard of the famous house will also be banned.

Tourists will no longer be allowed to write graffiti on the walls of the courtyards and the tunnel leading to it, but there will be specially-provided removable panels for them to write messages.

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Mayor of Verona, Flavio Tosi, told the Daily Telegraph: 'We've decided to enact a law that will sanction anyone who indulges in this kind of behaviour.

'A sign will be put up telling tourists where they are allowed to post their messages - that is, on the removable panels that we have provided.'

Verona earns a fortune from Shakespeare's legend of Romeo and Juliet, despite the fact that there is little evidence that the couple existed.

Historians say there is almost nothing linking the house to Shakespeare's tragic love story, apart from the house probably once being the home of the Cappello family, who may have been the model for the Capulets in the story.

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