The Lovers of Valdaro

A pair of human skeletons found at a construction site outside Mantua, Italy, are believed by archaeologists to be a man and a woman from the Neolithic period, buried around 6,000 years ago

For 6,000 years, two young lovers
have been locked in an eternal
embrace, hidden from the eyes of the world. This past weekend, the Lovers of Valdaro — named for the little village near Mantua, in northern Italy, where they were first discovered — were seen by the public for the first time.

After the discovery, many thought
that the couple had been killed. It
would fit in well with the history of
an Italian region famous for many
tragic love stories. Mantua is the city where Romeo was exiled and was told that his Juliet was dead. The composer Giuseppe Verdi chose it as the location for his opera Rigoletto , another story of star-crossed love and death.

But subsequent research revealed
that the skeletons did not have any
signs of a violent death. They were a woman and a man, ages between 18 and 20 years old. Some have wondered if they died together, holding each other in a freezing night. Professor Silvia Bagnoli, the president of the association Lovers in Mantua, doesn't exclude this possibility, but she says that more likely the skeletons were laid out in
that position after their deaths.

The mystery might never be solved. Still, many want to see the couple. The association Lovers in Mantua is campaigning for their right to have a room of their own. According to Bagnoli, €250,000 will be enough for an exhibition center and another €200,000 could pay for a multimedia space to tell the world the mysterious story of these prehistoric lovers.