As cities across Europe vie for Valentine’s Day visitors, Verona is positioning itself as one of the continent’s most ambitious romantic hubs, blending Shakespearean lore with a tightly curated program of events and newly regulated access to its most famous balcony.

With the 2025 edition of the Verona in Love festival scheduled around Valentine’s Day and a fresh ticketing system at Casa di Giulietta, the northern Italian city is courting couples with a mix of historic charm, cultural programming and modern crowd-control measures.

More News

Verona in Love 2025 Sets the Stage for Valentine Tourism

Verona in Love, the city’s flagship Valentine’s festival, will return in 2025 with a dense calendar of events anchored to the February 14 to 16 weekend. The official program spans concerts, street performances, guided tours, markets and museum initiatives, under an umbrella of themes that play on love, art and community. The festival timing extends beyond the core Valentine’s weekend, with related exhibitions and activities running from early February into March, encouraging longer stays and midweek arrivals.

The initiative is a cornerstone of Verona’s winter tourism strategy, designed to counterbalance the peak summer crowds that flood the city during the opera season and school holidays. By turning mid-February into a destination moment, local authorities and tourism operators are seeking to attract couples from across Europe and further afield, particularly those looking for a short city break with a clearly defined theme. The program’s combination of open-air events and intimate cultural offerings also caters to different travel styles and budgets.

City officials and cultural partners have increasingly framed Verona in Love as not only a celebration of romance but also an economic driver that supports hotels, restaurants, museums and small retailers during what was once a quieter shoulder period. The clustering of experiences across the historic center, from Piazza dei Signori to the banks of the Adige, is designed to disperse visitors while keeping the festival’s branding visible at every turn.

From “Amore al Centro” to “Percorsi d’Amore”: What Visitors Can Expect

The 2025 program is built around several thematic strands. “Amore al Centro,” running from February 14 to 16, will transform Verona’s historic heart into an open-air stage, with live music, street artists and illuminated installations in and around Piazza dei Signori, Cortile Mercato Vecchio and the medieval lanes linking them. Pop-up markets such as “Fatto con il cuore,” “Mani d’amore” and “Enoteca d’amore” will showcase artisan crafts, local wines and gourmet products, reinforcing the city’s gastronomic appeal alongside its romantic identity.

Another pillar, “Amore Diffuso,” stretches from February 8 to March 2 and connects Verona’s museums and cultural institutions under a shared programming banner. Exhibitions at venues including Palazzo della Gran Guardia, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti and the Museo Archeologico al Teatro Romano add visual-arts depth to what might otherwise be a primarily literary and theatrical narrative about love. For visitors, it offers an excuse to pair a Valentine’s trip with gallery-hopping and slower cultural experiences that extend beyond the expected Romeo and Juliet circuit.

“Percorsi d’Amore,” or Love Routes, focus on guided explorations of the city. The 2025 schedule includes UNESCO heritage walking tours, special openings of sites such as the archaeological area of Corte Sgarzerie, and themed itineraries that combine city history with contemporary storytelling. Some tours are paired with wine tastings, including Amarone-focused experiences that connect romantic narratives with the celebrated vineyards of the Valpolicella hills just outside Verona.

Casa di Giulietta Reimagined: Tickets, Time Slots and Crowd Control

Even as festival planners add new events, the single most iconic draw for Valentine’s travelers remains Casa di Giulietta, the 13th century residence that has long been marketed as Juliet’s house. In late 2025, city officials introduced a new ticketing regime that brought an end to free access to the courtyard beneath the famous balcony. From early December, visitors have been required to purchase a ticket to the Romeo and Juliet museum housed in the same building, priced at 12 euros, in order to enter the courtyard and step onto the balcony.

The policy, now in effect for the upcoming Valentine’s Day period, caps access to the courtyard at around 100 people at a time and strictly limits the duration of each balcony visit. Guests are typically given about a minute to take photographs and absorb the view before attendants usher in the next group. The restrictions respond to years of concern over overtourism at the site, which had seen dense crowds, bottlenecks and repeated debates over how to protect the fragile courtyard and its walls from vandalism and wear.

The shift has not been without controversy. When the paid-entry model was first rolled out, some visitors protested outside the gates, arguing that the courtyard, immortalized in countless tourist brochures and romantic comedies, had long been an accessible public symbol of Verona’s identity. City officials defended the decision on safety and preservation grounds, noting that managing flows was particularly urgent during peak seasons, including Valentine’s Day, Easter and Christmas, when queues can spill into surrounding streets.

For couples arriving in February 2026, the impact is practical. Advance planning becomes more important, and the experience on the balcony itself is likely to be calmer and less chaotic than in previous years, when hundreds of people jostled for a vantage point. The ticket also provides museum access, adding historical context to a visit that might once have been limited to a quick selfie in the courtyard and a hurried touch of the bronze Juliet statue for luck.

Romantic Experiences Beyond the Balcony

While Casa di Giulietta remains the poster image of Verona in Love, the festival has increasingly promoted alternative romantic settings to ease pressure on the narrow streets of Via Cappello. Among them is the medieval Torre dei Lamberti, which rises above Piazza delle Erbe. During the Valentine’s period, special “Aperintorre in Love” evenings combine sunset views over the tiled rooftops with aperitivo tastings at the top of the tower, positioning the city’s skyline as a competitor to more familiar panoramic spots in Florence or Paris.

The ancient Roman Arena, better known as the summer home of large-scale opera productions, also plays a quieter role in the winter season as a dramatic backdrop for hand-in-hand evening walks and guided tours. Although the main opera festival takes place in the warmer months, off-season visitors during Valentine’s can explore the amphitheater without summer’s heat and crowds, folding a sense of historic grandeur into their romantic itinerary.

Along the Adige River, couples can trace walking paths that loop across the Ponte Pietra and Ponte della Vittoria, passing viewpoints often used as backdrops for wedding and engagement photos. Several of the city’s boutique hotels and guesthouses have begun to package these experiences with private boat trips, candlelit dinners in historic palazzi and in-room treats, tailoring offers specifically around the Verona in Love calendar.

Literature, Film and the Enduring Romeo and Juliet Myth

Verona’s Valentine branding rests in large part on its association with Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” a play written in late 16th century England and inspired by earlier Italian tales. The city has embraced this narrative through theatrical performances, exhibitions and a network of sites that reference the star-crossed lovers, including what are marketed as the houses of both families and a supposed Juliet’s tomb. During the festival, theaters stage special productions such as bilingual versions of the play, along with concerts and readings that explore love from multiple cultural perspectives.

The modern tourist mythos around Verona has also been shaped by film. The 2010 movie “Letters to Juliet” introduced a global audience to the practice of writing letters to the fictional heroine and leaving them at Casa di Giulietta, where volunteers and association members have traditionally responded with advice and reflections. While the physical walls of the courtyard are now more tightly controlled, exhibitions and events linked to letter-writing and poetry remain part of the festival, including competitions and readings featuring contemporary Italian and international authors.

These cultural layers give Verona in Love a dimension that extends beyond surface-level symbolism. Visitors who engage with the theater productions, museum displays and literary events encounter a city that is as much about the complications and tragedies of love as about its celebratory gestures. For many couples, this mix of romance, history and introspection is part of the appeal, distinguishing Verona from destinations that rely more on scenic backdrops than on storytelling.

Museums and Exhibitions Put Art and Love at the Center

For 2025 and early 2026, Verona’s museums are aligning temporary and permanent exhibitions with the city’s romantic positioning. At Casa di Giulietta itself, displays of early 20th century postcards, paintings and decorative arts trace how Romeo and Juliet have been visualized in popular culture. Elsewhere, institutions such as the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti and Palazzo della Gran Guardia are hosting photographic and contemporary art shows that look at human relationships, identity and emotion, broadening the definition of what a love-themed trip might include.

These cultural offerings give visitors reasons to linger indoors during a season when temperatures can hover around freezing. Museum-led initiatives, including free guided tours bundled into standard tickets on selected days during the festival, are promoted as ways to enrich a Valentine’s stay without relying solely on restaurant reservations and hotel amenities. Couples can spend an afternoon moving between galleries and historic palaces before rejoining the outdoor festivities in the evening.

The focus on exhibitions also supports the city’s ambition to draw a more culturally engaged audience, including travelers who might usually gravitate to larger Italian art destinations such as Florence, Venice or Rome. By integrating international photography prizes, contemporary installations and archaeology-focused displays into the Verona in Love umbrella, curators hope to signal that the city’s cultural life is not confined to Shakespearean nostalgia.

Gastronomy, Wine and Boutique Stays Fuel Romantic Getaways

Food and wine are increasingly central to how Verona markets itself as a Valentine’s escape. Local enotecas and restaurants participate in festival-branded initiatives such as the “Enoteca d’amore” wine market, where visitors can sample regional reds from Valpolicella and Bardolino, as well as sparkling wines served with artisan chocolates and pastries. Several establishments in and around the historic center offer fixed-price Valentine’s tasting menus featuring seasonal ingredients, from risottos made with Amarone to dishes based on Monte Veronese cheeses and local olive oil.

In the accommodation sector, boutique hotels and guesthouses have been quick to package festival extras, from rose-petal turndown services and late check-outs to private guided walks through the city’s lesser-known streets. Some properties collaborate directly with official festival partners, bundling tickets to tower aperitifs, museum visits or “Percorsi d’Amore” tours into two-night or three-night romantic stay offers. Larger hotels on the edge of the old town are also targeting international markets with English-language promotions tied explicitly to Valentine’s Day in Verona.

For travelers flying into northern Italy, Verona’s role as a rail and road hub feeds into multi-stop itineraries that connect the city with Venice, Milan or the Dolomites. Tourism professionals note that Valentine’s trips often form part of longer winter breaks, making the city not only a final destination but a key node in broader Italian journeys. The Verona in Love branding is present in arrival halls, train stations and city buses throughout February, reinforcing the narrative that this is the moment of the year when the city leans fully into its romantic reputation.

Managing Popularity While Preserving Romance

As Valentine’s Day approaches, Verona faces the challenge of balancing its global image as a city of lovers with the practical realities of hosting large numbers of visitors in a compact historic center. The new access rules at Casa di Giulietta are a visible example of a broader shift toward structured tourism management, one that includes time-limited events, capped-capacity experiences and a push to spread visitors across multiple venues and neighborhoods.

Local stakeholders are watching closely to see how the combination of the Verona in Love program and the tightened controls at the balcony play out during the 2026 Valentine period. If the mix of festivals, exhibitions and paid-entry icons successfully delivers a smoother visitor experience, it may serve as a template for how other romantic destinations handle signature attractions that risk being undermined by their own success. For now, Verona is leaning into its role as an ultimate Valentine’s Day destination, offering couples not only a balcony but a whole city built around the idea of love, time and place.