La Republica has reported that during the last 17 years of his life, Michelangelo lived in a small room inside the Basilica of St. Peter's. According to Vatican experts, Michelangelo was the pope's chief architect during that period.

It is thought that Michelangelo lived there from January 1547 until his death on February 18, 1564. At the time the basilica was still under construction. Michelangelo had last worked at the Vatican while working on his Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel between 1534 and 1541.

A receipt from March 1557 shows that an engraver was paid "10 scudi to make a key for a chest in the room in St. Peter's where Master Michelangelo retires to." According to Simona Turriziani, a Vatican archivist, 10 scudi in the 1550s was more than the monthly salary of many of the artisans working on the basilica.

The entry was made in ink and is in a parchment-covered volume that lists expenditures of the Fabbrica di San Pietro (the office where the basilica's archives are kept) for the years 1556-1558.

Archeologists in northern Italy discovered two skeletons locked in a passionate embrace. To add to the romance of the story the skeletons were found outside of Mantua a town 25 miles south of Verona. Alas, the romance ends there. This is not the story of the Montague's and the Capulet's.

Had the skeletons been from the time of Shakespeare the story would have been almost unbearably romantic. Not that there isn't the possibility that a story was written. Paper was first used about 5,000 years ago in ancient Egypt. So who knows? Maybe somewhere, a long time ago the story of these two young people was recorded to the delight of romantics everywhere and to the dismay of high school students trying to interpret the meaning of love from a play.

How do we know the pair that was discovered were young when they died? By their teeth, which were found intact and not worn down.