Getting ready for a romantic celebration with the love of your life on Valentine’s Day?
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Flowers and French bubbly, a candlelit dinner for two, or maybe a barefoot stroll along a secluded beach would all earn you Brownie points.
But we’re willing to bet you there’s a couple of places associated with St Valentine that won’t.
Valentine’s Day started way back in the 14th century, invented by the so-called “father of English literature”, Geoffrey Chaucer.
In 1382, he wrote a poem called Parliament of Fools in which he noted: “This was St Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate”. The poem was written for the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia.
Chaucer’s last resting place is hardly a romantic venue. He was the first person to be buried at Poet’s Corner inside Westminster Abbey.
The real St Valentine was a priest who used to marry soldiers – against the explicit orders of the Emperor Claudius the Cruel of Ancient Rome. He married lovelorn couples in secret until Claudius eventually caught up with him and had him clubbed to death, then beheaded. This was back in about the year 270 or 280.
His skull, wearing a crown of flowers, and some of his bones are on display in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (the ornate church of St Mary) in Ripa, a suburb of Rome. The container looks like a gold 1960s television set, with a contraption similar in shape to an indoor aerial on top and lions’ feet holding up the glass case.
Quite bizarre, but hardly romantic. The church also has the coffin of a saint standing upright, and the tallest bell-tower in all of Rome, built in the12th century.
Then there is the Bocca della Verità (the Mouth of Truth), an ancient artefact hanging next to a wall in the vestibule. Everyone is supposed to put one of their hands in the mouth of this marble mask as legend has it if you are a liar your hand will be bitten off. It is all grist for the mill.
But you will be surprised how many tourists refuse to contemplate extending either of their hands towards the mask.
Hollywood capitalised on this in the 1953 romantic comedy, Roman Holiday. The movie starred Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, the latter winning the Oscar and the Golden Globe awards for best actress.
In the film, Peck surprised Hepburn by pretending to lose a hand in the mouth of the Bocca della Verità. Corny? Of course, but Hepburn’s reaction might have helped her scoop the awards.
