in verona just before christmas last year (2021). i’m sure the atmosphere is generally very different here, but on the 19^th and 20^th of december the city was enveloped in a cold freezing fog. the skies were leaden and there were only a very few hours of daylight.

in the heart of verona there was the inevitable christmas market, and surprisingly a huge number of tourists. the crowds were particularly dense around the so-called ‘juliet’s house’. a tourist attraction confected around the shakespeare tragedy of ‘starcros’t lovers’ in romeo and juliet.
away from the crowds the town had taken on shroud-like ghostly and mysterious appearance and the crowds rapidly thinned out to the occasional apparition in the mist.