cathies

Still loving your report Peter, I check in each day when I get home from work.

I'll share our funny story from when we went to Burano. We strolled around for a while enjoying the atmosphere. I had thought that I might buy my mother-in-law a gift from Burano as in her day, she loved to knit and crochet. Arthritis has put a stop to that, her 84 year old hands can't manage any more.

So we looked and looked and eventually I found a toilet roll holder with some hand stitched embroidery that was very sweet. A loo roll holder is probably not what I would buy everyone, but she has a bathroom with lots of little crafty things in it.

To cut a long story short, we got home from the trip, gave her the loo roll holder which she loved. It was examined in great detail and she was able to tell us that the embroidery is "tatting" not embroidery

A week later I popped in for a quick visit and guess what is hanging on the wall in the KITCHEN!!! When challenged she replied that it is so lovely that she doesn't want it hidden away in the bathroom.

So, anyway, that's my little Burano story!!

PS: after much discussion she did move it to the bathroom....

marigross

bookmarking for weekend reading

Peter_S_Aus

I'm writing a lot in Venice. Exploring Venice, exploring myself, allowing the words to drift out onto the page. It's a long story, and it had to start somewhere. Here's the start – it's all out of order, and I can't help that. It just writes itself, in a way. The end, the current thoughts, are at Chapter 20 or something, and I suppose one day I'll print the lot, and edit into a coherent story. In the meantime, here's Chapter Zero.

0.
Beginnings.
They say that “all roads lead to Rome”, but everyone you've ever heard of has been to Venice. Mark Twain (who described the Basillica as a “vast warty bug taking a meditative walk” and the lion in the Tintoretteo “Paradise” in the Doge's Palace as sitting beside Saint Mark and disputing with the saintly scribe the correct spelling of an adjective), Dwight Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, JFK, Marilyn Munro, Aristotle Onassis, Queen Elizabeth, Pablo Picasso, assorted Mafia dons, Winston Churchill with his watercolour paints. It is truly the World's City. Just don't tell the Venetians, they have been in the habit of thinking that the World, or at least “A Quarter and a Half a Quarter” of the World belongs to Venice, or at least should belong.

Lou and I came to Italy in December 2006, for three and a half weeks, and spent six nights in Venice before Verona, Como, Florence, Assisi and Rome. I'd been to Venice before, in 1975, as quite a callow youth, with my then wife Jane and daughter Pip, as part of the mandatory one year overseas trip we Australians had to do then, before acquiring the brick home and generally “settling down”.

I rember Lou asking me “If you could go back to anywhere in Europe, where would you go?”. And I always said, “Venice”. So in 2006, Venice was the first port of call in the trip, Venice was our introduction to Italy, and I'm so glad we did it that way. See some Venice, and after that, see some Italy.

I remember arriving, and finding our hotel. It was near San Marco, and I'd mapped out in my mind exactly how to find it. Turn right from the Aligaluna ferry stop, past the souvenir vendors, cross the Piazzetta and the Piazza, under the clock tower, first right, 30 yards and we were there. I was so keen to show Venice to Lou, to unroll it like a magic carpet, albeit a carpet supported on wooden piles in the lagoon, a carpet with bumps and lumps and a bit waterlogged, wine stains and not a few blood stains, bare patches and worn threads. I so wanted Venice to deliver on the magic carpet. She did.

It seemed like magic. We thought of changing our itinerary, staying for another week or two, and didn't. I'm glad we didn't, because if we'd stayed three weeks, we might have thought that we'd “done” Venice, seen it all. We did the bigger sights, the Baedeker “don't miss this” list of attractions, and didn't really see Venice.

When we left, after six days, we were both a bit quiet, biting the bottom lip a little. Before we were half way to Verona on the train, I think we'd both decided that we had to come back again, for a lot longer.

I'm a planning freak by nature. I like the process, and I'm inclined to think that you can have an experience three times over, once in the planning, once in the doing, and once in retrospect. So I do endless plans, many of which get abandonded, some which get followed for a little while, very few that survive unscathed. I operate in a visual way, an odd thing as I'm better with words than with the visual. If I remember reading something, I'm likely to forget which book I read it in, but remember the place on the page. This probably explains why my books look particularly well thumbed, and possibly explains why I'm hopeless with names.

The visual thing means that I see myself arriving and doing things way before they happen. Fifteen years ago, I did the mid life crisis by riding a bicycle around much of Australia, 8000 km in 100 days, rather vigorous. The thing that made it possible was that I'd had a vision, for years, of myself rolling into Darwin, having crossed the continent from Melbourne. A bit like a red carpet being rolled out continuously, and just having to follow it.

Venice has been the same, the vision becoming reality, after heaps of plannng. Negotiate time off work, save money, endless internet searches to find an apartment that was in the right location, and not too costly.

A lot of reading, guide books, the standard books, like Morris, Ruskin and Berendt. Acquiring a 1905 Baedeker, allowing us to visualise what it was like to travel in the Edwardian era. Travel sections of newspapers, the Commune d'Venezia web site for acqua alta info. Two years of anticipation, sentences starting with “When we are in Venice...”, “the first thing we'll have to do is buy some fine wine glasses”, a map of Venice pinned up on the wall, to note interesting places. Figure out what to bring, camera gear, quality cheese grater and pepper mill, decent kitchen knives, easel, art gear, baby computer. Learn a smattering of Italian – no way near enough - and that's a regret.

Lots, lots of reading. I went off on this Morris kick after reading 'Venice”, devouring most books that Morris has written, Coronation Everest, Fisher's Face, Conundrum, the Markets of Seluika, A Venetian Bestiary, the Victorian Empire trology. Morris inroduced Venice to me and Venice introduced Morris to me. How fortunate was that!

Reading “No Vulgar Hotel”, which we neither finished. It seemed so patronising, these two women who spend three weeks in Venice each year, and calling themselves “we Venetophiles”. It seemed to me to be two hundred pages of put downs, plus, I think, some plundered phrases and concepts.

Arriving, with Venice rising through the fog on the lagoon as the ferry from the airport brought us closer. Through Murano, quick stop at Fondamenta Nuove, call at the Lido, and then you are at San Marco. Disembark. You've arrived, stepping onto dry land, walking into the most recognisable streetscape in all the world.

Peter_S_Aus

Here's some more. I've overcome my writers block.

Cheers.

18.
Evidence of a minor tragedy.
I think I may have sighted the evidence of a small pesonal tragedy in Calle Lunga San Barnaba this morning. A torn up map of Venice, and I allow myself the space to ramble around.
I used to be a golfer, which is an insult to many golfers, rather I used to play at golf. I mastered that skulled chip that slid across the green, the hooked drive that had players on adjacent fairways thinking that a safety helmet should be standard attire, the stylish tee shot across the water trap, that skated like a speedboat, scaring ducks and slaughtering surfacing fish, before sinking out of sight. I played on a course that had a water trap on every hole, the exceptions being the holes with multiple water traps.

The guys in the pro shop mined those water traps for golf balls and sold them, a great many to me. They said “Look, they are top value – most of them have only been hit once”. But they also told me that, on one aqualung clad mining venture, they had retrieved a full set of clubs, No 1 driver through to putter, plus bag and buggy, from a lagoon. I can see the frustrated golfer saying, with the expletives deleted, “I don't care to play at golf any more”, before throwing the whole kit into the water.

Maybe the owner of the torn up map in Calle Lunga San Barnaba tore up their map in frustration, sick of navigation and getting lost, sick of dragging suitcases, sick of their partner saying “why don't you just ask someone” - men NEVER ask directions – and decided they did not care to play at Venice any more. But there might be a happier story – maybe they decided that the best itinerary in Venice was the one where you don't use a map, where you just get lost. I don't know, and I hope this was the case.

I succeeded in getting lost yesterday, walking in a full circle. It's funny, but I recognise landmarks when they are in a familiar place, when they come up in an expected sequence. But when I don't expect to see them, I don't recognise them. So when I recognised our local beggar on a bridge, I thought, “Hello, she's changed her turf. That's a bit odd. I'd expect to see her near San Barnaba, what's she doing here. And that looks like a nice campo just beyond her”. Except she was on her own turf, it was me who was out of place.

I suppose she is a reincarnation of the Barnabotti, impoverished nobles, forced to live around San Barnaba because rents were cheap in 1750. (They are a little higher these days, sadly.) The Barnabotti were in a complete poverty trap, prohibited by law from engaging in crafts or keeping shops, and required by law to wear silk. I don't see all that much silk on the streets these days, and no Barnabotti.

19. On various things.
On Gondolas.
A gondola is 14 metres long, and fully laden will displace some 800 kilos. You see them drifting along the canals, sometimes in a fleet of half a dozen, with a gentleman playing a piano accordion – surely the Devil's instrument - possibly with a tenor who should go and find another job, ideally at the oil refinery at Marghera. The gondoliers make their way rather lazily up the smaller canals, an occasional stroke with the oar, cigarette in hand, or maybe texting on the mobile phone. I saw one this evening reading “il Gazzettino” as he rowed a party of tourists. The occasional kick to a brick wall to keep the craft on course. The occasional song – I particularly liked one version of “Whisky, whisky, always makes me tipsy”. He had a party of Japanese on board – it's possible they thought he was doing some G&S, maybe from “The Mikado”. True. And this time, the truth to everyone.

I saw a couple of gondoliers yesterday, getting somewhere in a hurry, and it was a different sight. Think about a guy in a straw hat and striped shirt, making the gondola fairly rip along, the port gunwale barely six inches from the wall, really bending their backs. I did the Sydney-Hobart in a smaller craft, and I didn't have to row the thing. That's when you can really see their skill, when there are no passengers on board, and it's something to witness. Ballet in a 36 foot craft weighing half a ton.


On glassware.
There is, without a doubt, an awful lot of glass in Venice. The inescapable corollary to this is that there is a lot of awful glass in Venice, much of it in a particularly bilious yellow. There are some classic designs, at least to my eye. I bought a couple of fragile hexagonal glasses with the most delicate coloured rims here in 1975, and they survived many house moves, kids, dogs, parties, with the pair being split with a divorce. Jane and I always called them the “Venini” glasses, as we'd bought them from a shop selling Venini glass in the Piazza, but I don't think Venini had much to do with them. We kept one each, and I've since found out they are made by Segusa.

I was able to complete both pairs two years ago, thirty one years after the original puchase, and buying two more hexagonal glasses has become, if not a tradition, at least a custom for me in Venice. And Jane will, in several weeks course, have a trio of glasses. Eventually it might be a quartet, maybe – who knows? Habits die hard.


On silence.
Everyone says that Venice is quiet, which means that there's no traffic noise. But it's not silent by any means, you just hear more. Our campanile, the Carmini, belts out the hours, plus a couple of different tunes of about nine strokes. One tune, “Allay, Allay, Allahleuia” means that it is about to strike the hour, so stand by to count. At 6:00 PM, it goes ballistic, all four bells ringing in a fugue, with the four bells all at a different rate. The rhythm seems to split up, and then the bells chase each other until they are in time, and then split again. A quarter of an hour before mass, the tenor bell rings about 120 times, and the bass bell just before mass. There's another tune, to the rhythm of Twinkle Twinkle, and we're not sure what that means, but we're mapping it through the 24 hour cycle. The campanile was struck by lightning in 1756, while the monks were ringing the bells – in their hurry to escape, one man ran his head against a wall, and was killed.

You can hear the beat of birds wings, Actv ferries and the ferry that runs to Pireaus blasting their horns in the fog, which distorts the sound. Occasional sirens from the police, fire and ambulance boats, the thud of the diesels on the boats hauling freight around the canals. The clatter on Wednesdays and Saturdays, which are the days for recycling glass, and to which we feel obliged to make a proper contribution. Walking home from the supermarket, I heard a soprano singing exercises, and this evening, a kid (I assume) giving a spirited rendition of “Mary had a little lamb”, followed by “When the Saints go marching in” on the recorder, as she walked down the street. Encore, encore!

Another sound that permeates is the “Dok dok dok” of hard heels on stone paving, as people walk up Calle Lunga. You hear it at any time of the day or night, and it seems particularly Venetian. Maybe it's the kind of stone that is used for paving, or the fact that the water table is barely below the stones. Lou's joined the Venetians, buying a pair of shoes with hard heels. Dok dok dok.

On strange pieces of stone and brick.
You'll see sloping pieces of stone let into corners about two feet above the ground, or brick structures with a cement rendered top in corners. The campanile of San Toma has a veritable row of these stones, and I always wondered what they were for.

I found out - “Venice is a Fish” by Tiziano Scarpa informed me. Venice is notoriously short of public conveniences, and to avoid corners being used for what the French are pleased to call a pissoir, these sloping stones have been erected. So if a gentlemen attempts to “splash his boots”, as they say, his boots will be splashed.

On the declining population of Venice.
Everyone, from Morris to de Mosto, comments on, and rather mourns, the decline in the population of Venice. It's a hard city to live in, particularly for the elderly. I saw a small example of the decline yesterday – a group of undertakers discharging a coffin on the Zattere, headed for Santa Maria d' Rosario, or maybe Sant' Agnese. They did not look like boat people, fumbling with the mooring lines, and the boat was a standard, craft, albeit pretty well painted – but not black. Once it was well secured, a hydraulic lift raised the coffin, they loaded it onto a trolley, and wheeled it along the Fondamenta. Next stop, the Isola di San Michelle, for a ten year stint.

While the true Venetian population may number only 60,000, there is a vibrant student population, moving from campus to campus around Dorsoduro and San Polo. The bars in Campo Santa Marghherita are a popular stop along the route, and while many head to Piazzale Roma at the end of the day for buses to Mestre, many of them live locally – we see them in the supermarkets. At school finishing time, the streets buzz with kids. They are not dying out.

Another population that is not moving away from Venice any time soon – but which would certainly prefer - reside in the area beside the Fondamenta di Santa Maria Maggiore in Santa Croce, and beside the Fondamenta delle Convertite on Giudecca. These are the male and female prisons respectively. Visiting days, on Saturdays and Sundays, sees quite a press of people, plus not a few police boats lined up along Rio de Santa Maria Maggiore, and one hears a rather coarse Italian being spoken by people waiting to visit inmates, and a cigerette smoke haze which may well summon the fire boats. A wide range of clothing,and maybe the better dressed are visiting white collar crims.

If you are going to have prisons, have the them near town, so that inmates are not completely isolated from the society they are expected to rejoin. In Australia, we build them 100 miles out of town, and then wonder why prisoners are un-socialised on release. Build them in town, so that everyone has to take responsibility for the fact that no better solution can be found than to throw people into prison. Even the prison hulks, cast off vessels from Nelson's fleet, were in the Thames.

YvonneT

Bump!!!!

debrad149

love reading your report!! we will be in venice in may.

RufusTFirefly

While Venice's population has declined a lot, keep in mind that the historic center in the lagoon never had a huge population ala London or Paris or Rome or other world power. Probably around 150,000 or so at its peak--estimates vary. And it always had a lot of non-residents in town, though not nearly as many as now.

Peter_S_Aus

20.
A Day Trip on the Lagoon.
The Lagoon is getting under my skin. Seriously under my skin. The guide books mostly treat it as no more than a fish bowl to keep Venice afloat along with Murano and Burano, treating the Lido as a barrier to restrain the Adriatic, lagoon as acquarium. There’s a dearth of information, at least in English. I’ve searched the book shops, and found little. There’s one good one, a heap of helicopter photos, with a one page explanation per island, but it is still rather lacking. Maybe an Admiralty chart would be more forthcoming, and I’ll have to search one out.

So, in the absence of books, we circumnavigated the northern lagoon. We took ship to Mazzorbo, overland traverse by foot to Burano, traghetto over to Torcello and back, and then continued the voyage via Actv to Treporti, where we found a bar and bus stop, plus a large sculpture for Fred and Ginger, a pair of monster bronze shoes. Embarked on a non-Actv vessel serving the No 13 Linea, to Punta Vela and Chiesa where we trans-shipped, for some reason. Continued with vessel flagged to the Actv, via Capannone and Vignole, then Faro and Colonnia on Murano, and thence to Venice. The best fun, for 14 Euro.

The islands of the lagoon have not always been so accessible. The guide books from the Edwardian era speak of unspoilt beaches, making it sound, as Morris puts it, that a sleeping bag and bag of trade beads might be required. Now the Actv ferries run like clockwork, as did our little voyage.

The channels in the lagoon are very narrow, and one would leave them at one’s peril. I believe the lagoon has an area of one thousand square miles, and an average depth of one and a half metres. It’s like navigating in a puddle, with slight ditches. The channels are marked by tripods of piles driven into the mud, and these tripods, bricole, are one of the most evocative sights of Venice, for me. There must be thousands of them, one book says 20,000 of them, and sometimes there is a shrine attached to them, or a photo of a loved one. Venice seems to be made of brick and stone, but in a way it is made of water. Water provided the ramparts, the moat, the entire reason for Venice’s existence. Without the bricole, one is truly lost, as Pepin’s fleet discovered in 809.

Channel maintenance is continual – Venetians trying to avoid the progressing silting that brought Torcello down one thousand years ago, an early victim of environmental change. There are barges with excavators working all over the lagoon, and also heavy civil works being done along the island on San Erasmo, which look as though they are intended for recreational boating, maybe bringing some economic activity to this island. There have been multi-million trees cut down to build Venice – 1.2 million alone under the Church of the Salute, and this tree cutting must have caused so much extra run-off and silting of the lagoon. No wonder that Torcello got silted out of existence. Maybe Venice has been a victim of its own ambition and endeavour.

Torcello boasts the oldest building in the lagoon, from aboout 550 AD, and at one time had a population of some 50,000, its own Bishop and Council, not unlike the Grand Council of Venice. The mosaics in the cathedral there are quite stunning, and the campanile is clouded with scaffolding, so work is being done. It is rather depopulated now, with residents numbering thirty souls, but with one of Venice’s more exclusive hotels, the Locanda Cipriani, which has housed QEII and other notables. Maybe security is easier there – half a dozen guys with shot guns could protect the entire establishment. It is pretty quiet there this time of year, and nothing is open. Which is nice – it seemed like a day in the country, walking around on un-paved ground, seeing fields where artichokes have been harvested. The guys restoring the Ponte Diavolo, the Devils Bridge, took the traghetto back to Burano for lunch – it’s only a five minute trip, and these men expect a glass of something to be served with lunch – they don’t do a thermos of tea and sandwiches.

The house numbering on Torcello follows the Venetian practice of sequential numbers, but not numbering every door. The highest number we sighted was 34, a coincidence as we live at No 34, in Melbourne.

21.
Art and Art Galleries.
We visited the Gallerie dell’Accademia today, and I was keen to see Paolo Callaria’s (otherwise known as Veronese) painting of “The Feast at the House of Levi”. It is truly enormous, and most detailed. It was originally commissioned as a “Last Supper”, and did not meet with approval on its unveiling in 1573. It contains a wealth of bizarre detail, a Salvador Dali Last Supper, except lacking folded watches. The Inquisitors did not approve of a painting that incorporated “dogs, buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarves and other such absurdities”, accusing him of allowing himself “the same licence as poets and madmen”, and gave him three months to fix the thing. The sessions must have been a hoot – on being asked “What signifies the figure of him whose nose is bleeding”, Veronese replied, “He is a servant who has a nose bleed from some accident”. Very dead pan, and the said servant is on the staircase at lower left, bloodied kerchief in hand, and looking sorry for himself.

Veronese must have retained a top silk, a smart attourney, a Jesuit or a Dominican, the sorts of guys who can determine, exactly, how many angels can dance on a head of a pin. Their advice was, in essence, Look, just change the title, call it “The Feast at the House of Levi”, and if you get any heat, hit them with Luke, Chapter 5, “And Levi made Him a great feast in his own house”. Which Veronese duly did, end of issue. As they say, the Devil can quote scripture for his own purpose. The painting is a riot.

Other paintings there give a most detailed view of Venetian life, including a large crowd scene from about 1550, which contains, in one corner, an advertisement. “House to let, 5 ducats per annum.”

The provenance of the works makes interesting reading. “Taken to Paris in 1790, retreived in 1820“or “From the main altar at church so-and-so, since demolished.” I believe Venice had 200 churches, but maybe this is not quite correct, maybe it is “Venice has had 200 churches, but not all at the same time”, along with several synagogues and a mosque. Our local cinema in Campo Santa Margherita is built in a church (the campanile still stands). The Church of San Aperniian was put up for auction: it failed to make its reserve price, and was pulled down to make way for the statue in Campo Manin, which surely fronts Venice’s second most ugly building. A Palladian church vanished beneath the rails of the station. The church of Santa Maria Maggiore now forms part of the prison.

The same applies to campaniles – some survive, some are converted to other uses – such as electricity sub-stations, there is one near the Rialto, some fall and are re-constructed, some just dissapear. Mazzorbo retains one from its former five, surrounded by grape vines, with no adjacent church and with a remnant small chapel converted to public conveniences – free, I might add, surely a miracle in Venice. In the sixteenth century, there were more than 200 campaniles in Venice, a veritable forest.

The campanile of Sant’ Angelo fell three times before they finally gave in and demolished it, the tower of San Georgio dei Greci leaned from its inception, and has caused concern since 1816. It serves as a great photo opportunity from the Ponte de la Pieta on the Rive degli Schiavoni, and must be digitally captured when it falls – there are photographers there all the time. The San Marco campanile fell and was re-constructed, while, in 1515, the campanile of the Oratory of the Virgin, near San Giobbe, was trashed overnight by the monks of the adjacent monastery. They were so infuriated by the ringing of the bells they flattened it: they had to rebuild it at their own expense. I took a look – it’s near the Ponte de Tri Archi in Canneregio, and I couldn’t see where the new brickwork had been coursed in – but after all, it has been 500 years, and things weather.

The list to starboard on the Carmini campanile was solved by boring holes into the brick on three sides of the campanile, driving in wooden wedges, and then eating the wedges with acid, allowing the campanile to settle into the cavities. It’s been standing for 450 years since this treatment, and the responsible – and, one must allow, most brave – engineer is buried in the church. The campanile of Sant’ Angelo was less fortunate. A Bolognese, one Aristotle, undertook to correct the lean, and they do know about towers in Bologna. His method was secret, but involved excavating the foundations, and the lean was corrected. Until the scaffoding was removed, and the campanile collapsed. Aristotle fled to Moscow, where he built part of the Kremlin. Sounds like the sort of thing that would have happened in Queensland 25 years ago, commissioned by Bjelke Petersen, sponsor of the car that ran on water.

In 1902, the campanile of St Toma was in such poor condition that it was demolished, and a small belfry erected beside the church. One can still see the set of three bells (what’s the collective noun for bells? A peal, a chorus, I don’t know), but I’ve yet to hear them ring. It still stands, with sloping stone let into the corners to discourage gentlemen from doing un-gentlemanly things, while a real estate agent occupies the bell ringer’s house.

I sighted some sobering monuments in Canneragio, in the Ghetto, a sequence, a story.
Monument No 1. A tablet, let into the wall, generally detailing the things that Jews were allowed to do in Venice, and providing for a reward for anyone denouncing people (i.e. Jews) for blasphemy. The reward to be funded from the prpoerty of the blasphemer. The Lion of Venice has been hammered off this tablet, probably on the falll of the Republic – maybe this was the one good outcome of Napoleon’s invasion.

Monument No 2. A tablet, listing the names of Venetian Jews who died in the 1915-18 war, patriotic Italians, who happened to be Jewish.

Monument No 3. A tablet, immediately opposite No 2, erected by the remants of the Venetian Jewish community, abhoring the deaths of 200 Venetian Jews, 8000 Italian Jews and six million European Jews in the Holocaust.

Monument No 4. An apology by the Mayor of Venice, in Hebrew, Italian and English, to the 200 Venetian Jews who were carted out of Venice.

Monument No 5. A structure made of horizontal timber boards, bound with vertical steel straps. The names of the 200 Venetian Jewish victims are engraved on the boards. The whole effect is of a cattle truck, and is most profound.


Monument No 6 is not meant to be a monument at all, but I can’t help but see it in the seguence. It is a small kiosk in the Ghetto, to contain the three or four security guards on duty there all the time. That’s a monument to intolerance, and can too easily lead one back to Monument No 1.

annhig

hi again Peter,

you are a man after my own heart -one of our best days in Venice was the day we "did" Burano, Torcello, murano, and then back via the islands and giardino.

were all the restaurants on Torcello closed? - we had a lovely meal at the one of the restaurants there [not the Cipriani] that had a great log fire and had a back room full of italians on what seemed to be an outing of some type. despite all the tourists the cathedral was magical, and as we left, the mists lifted and we could see the Dolomites in the distance. Magic!

how did you find your long-let in venice and do you mind telling us how much it's costing you? you have really whetted my apetite for a long[er] stay in Italy and Venice would be towards the top of my list of places to stay.

regards, ann

Peter_S_Aus

Various Things - and probably the last post unless I edit the entire diatribe into some sort of coherent story. But anyway,
Some things, odd things, things that amused me.
Thing No 1.
In Campo Zan Degola there is a carved stone head on a tablet mounted on the church wall – it’s just to the left of No 1710, Santa Croce. It commemorates one Biagio Cargnio, Venice’s counterpart to Sweeney Todd, a suasage maker. A workman found a child’s finger with nail attached in his bowl of stew. Biagio confessed, he was tortured, beheaded and quartered. Five hundred years later, there’s still a tablet showing this bodyless head. I imagine that this little stone tablet is of great assistance to Venetian mothers when applying discipline to unruly children.
But he is immortalised, too – the Riva di Biasio, alongside the Grand Canal, opposite and downstream from the Station remembers him. When his quartered body parts were put on public display for public edification, they were hung from the Ponte dei Squartai, the Bridge of the Quartered Men over the Rio del Tolentini, and his hooded executioner lived, incognito and very quietly, in the Calle della Testa, the Street of the Head, near the Rialto.
When you walk around this town, you can't escape all these associations – Peggy Guggenheim's gallery is close to the Ponte de Fromager – the Bridge of Cheese. Smile, say “Cheese”. Snap.

Thing No 2.
Paolo Sarpi, my favourite Venetian philosopher, who told the truth not to everyone, angered the Vatican. (He also discovered the contraction of the iris, so there you go, he can't have been all bad.) He was the Official Religious Adviser to the Doges during the anti-Rome period, a job which might be seen as having temporary tenure at best. The Vatican beleved in a “Crash through or crash” method at the time, and hired assassins to nail Sarpi - one of them was reputed to be a Scot – and the attempt was made near the church of Santa Fosca. He was left for dead with a dagger in his cheek, but recovered, and hung the dagger in his monastery church, as an offering for his miraculous escape – after the dagger had been tested for poison on a dog and a chicken. Doubtless Sarpi dined out for months on the tale of “Hey, did I ever tell you about these two guys who tried to kill me – one of them was wearing a skirt”. There's a fine statue of him in the Campo San Fosca, erected three hundred years after his death, which was on 15 January, 1623, hopefully from natural causes.
Thing No 3.
Another curiosity are the paintings by Carpaccio in the Scuola di San Georgio degli Schiavoni. Carpaccio painted a cycle of paintings detailing how St George maimed the dragon, slaughtered it in front of an admiring crowd, then Saint Jerome leading a lion into his monastery to have a thorn removed from his foot, and Saint Jerome being inspired in his study. The cycle of paintings is a riot of detail and humour.
In the painting where St George mains the dragon, the ground is littered with body parts, and St George’s horse looks considerably more fierce than the dragon. The dragon looks particularly sad, the sort of dragon that might be found in a book of fairy tales. Or maybe the kind of dragon that Charles Darwin discovered on the Galapogos islands, a dragon not feeling too happy being dragged into St. George's celestial limelight.

As Saint George kills the dragon, many people look on, in a docile fashion. Not so St George’s failthful steed, recognisable by its harness. The horse is engaged in bashing another horse with its head, while the bashed horse rears up. I find it as almost as great a focus as the dragon and the dragon appears to be saying, “George, George, if I promised to behave a little better, eat a few less people, could we stop this right now. Please, please, pretty please”. George looks as though he might be amenable to this suggestion.

The third painting shows St Jerome leading a lion into his monastery, to remove a thorn from the lion’s foot – maybe St Jerome is patron saint to vetinerary surgeons. St Jerome walks on a crutch, the lion is particularly docile, and Carpaccio may have modelled the lion on his own tabby cat, with touches of golder retriever. This has not stopped the monks from running away in fear, including one monk who is keeping up with the pace on a peg leg. Other people in the painting are not disturbed – fear of lions would appear to be a monkly thing only. Domestic touches flourish – there are washing lines strung from the monastery windows, and the livestock on the monastery green do not appear in the least disturbed by the commotion.

The final Carpaccio shows St Jerome being inspired, gazing out his window. A small dog, a Jack Russel maybe, gazes at him expectantly, willing St Jerome to leave this inspiration kick and throw a ball for him.

Thing No 4.
The Cathedral of San Pietro in Castello is about as far East from San Marco you can go in Venice without wetting your feet – but it was the seat of the Bishop until 1797, although religious affairs were concentrated at St Marks – the Doges were always going to keep spiritual matters firmly under state control. During the period of the great interdict in the early 1600's, when Venice and the Vatican had a major power struggle, a priest, wary of Venetian pride, advised that he'd celebrate Mass when the Holy Ghost told hime to get on with it. The response from the Republic was that the Holy Ghost had already inspired them – to hang anyone who refused, so would he kindly proceed. That's the way things were – the Bishop in his lofty seat in Castello, the Republic conducting its spiritual affairs in St.Marks. The Bishop's throne in the Cathedral in Castello is said to contain a stone from St Peter's throne in Antioch – it's also carved with lines from the Holy Koran, but I don't read Arabic. Given the Phrophet Muhammed was born around 500 AD, and that He wrote the Koran, and that by then St Peter was long in the panoply of Saints, I can't quite see how that could be. But it is an excellent story, demonstrating how Venice's face was turned more towards the East than the West (and Venice's back was certainly turned towards that generally despised Western adversary, the Vatican).
The first door to the left when you enter the adjacent monastery cloister is Castello No 1. The cloister has a somewhat spooky feeling, quite lonely although I believe it has been used as accomodation for Petty Officers at the adjacent Naval College. Now it's pretty well all shuttered up, with some fishing gear stored in it. We're slowly finding No 1 for each Sestieri, but Lou's not about to give up on No 1, Santa Croce. No.1 Castello is a little too out of the way for her tastes.

Thing No 5.
There are a pair of stone lions on the base of the campanile of San Polo. One lion appears to be fighting with a fish. The other is quite content holding the head of Doge Marin Faliero, beheaded for treason in 1355 on the steps of his palace. He was Doge for only eight months, and made the profound mistake, when coming ashore in the Piazzetta to take up office, of walking between the two columns. His Doge-ship was doomed from the start – it is REALLY IS UNLUCKY TO WALK BETWEEN THOSE COLUMNS – DO NOT SAY THAT YOU HAVE NOT BEEN WARNED! He is the only Doge without a portrait in the Doge's Palace – in its place is a black cloth with the inscription “This is the place of Marini Falieri, decapitated for treason”. So there.
There is a pair of pink marble columns on the portico of the Doge's Palace, facing the Piazzetta, and the election of a new Doge was announced between these columns, the announcement taking the form “So-and- so is now Doge. Get over it”. Fallieri's head and torso were exhibited for public edification for a day between these columns, before he was buried with his head between his legs, in a stone coffin, which subsequently saw duty as a cattle trough on the mainland. Such is life.

Thing No 6.
In the Naval Museum there are relief maps, made prior to Venetian military action against various fortifications, such as Crete or Corfu, maps created as a visual aid to military planning, gun trajectories, weak points in fortifications. The same relief maps are to be found on the facade of the church of Santa Maria Giglio. The facade records the military activities of a Venetian family, the Barbaros, and is the ego wall to end them all. It even shows a relief map of Rome, complete with Colluseum and St Peters, and a relief map of Spoletto, which is accurate, to my memory at least. Saint Peter's has been worn quite smooth by finger touching.

Thing No 7.
The Basillica of St Mark burned in 976 (well before the advent of the fire service just across the Rio Ca' Foscari from the Foscari Campus). Bad luck, one would have thought, except that the fire was set in order to burn out the last of the Candiano Doges, Pietro IV. Venetians were not happy with Pietro's policies, attempting to push Venetians into a feudal way of life, restricting the slave trade and increasing taxation, repudiating his wife Giovanna, sending her off to a convent, and making a further political marriage with the sister of the Marquis of Tuscany, of all people. Plus, Otto I of Germany had supplied a force of foreign mercenaries to the Doge, with the Doge starting to appear like an emperor, not a servant of the Republic.
Sufficient reasons for an insurgency – the Venetians were seriously Not Happy.
The Doge's palace was a defended fort at that time, not the lace confection that we see today, and the insurgents decided to burn it down – but for kindling they had to use some 300 wooden houses surrounding it, and so they went up in smoke. The Basillica was collateral damage, as the military are wont to say, and the Doge and his son were murdered and their bodies put on display near the Rivoalto.
Tricky job being Doge, one would do well to have one's life insurance well funded – and a fast boat with loyal, well paid, crew immediately to hand in case of aggro.


23.
Sunday 1 February, 2009, and we have a week to go. It's snowing – again – and we're a bit over it. We think that a sunny Venice would be nice. OK, so go in August, and stand in line for three hours to see the Doge's Palace, or cross the Rialto bridge. But we like a Venice that we can walk around in without feeling intolerably crowded, so we had better just get over the cold.
So after eight weeks, how does it feel? We do feel connected, in a tiny way, but maybe as connected as outsiders can be. I've enjoyed a “guide book free” experience, discovering the city in reverse – see something, say a stone head between the paws of a carved lion – and then find out what it is all about. We've wandered, with no particular destination in mind, finding odd things, an indoor skittle alley, the old gas works, the place where water was piped ashore in Venice in 1848, the prison, boat yards, the occasional church or notable sight. We've watched garbage boats, cranes lifting loads, guys driving mooring piles into the bed of a canal, mothers collecting little children from school, people restoring ceilings. We've been elbowed by the boys leaving the Polytech in Cannaregio, given directions to beffuddled visitors in Italian and English, stroked cats. We've spoken broken Italian and broken English to the girls in our local bar, walked through every door we fancied that looked even slightly inviting.
I'll quote from “Venice is a Fish” by Tiziano Scarpa – he puts it very well. “The first and only itinerary I suggest to you has a name. It's called: at random. Subtitle: aimlessly. ............... Getting lost is the only place worth going to.”
We've done a lot of that.

I think I've learned something of how a community can work, when it has to live within itself. It's fashionable to brand Venice as a theme park, a kind of Disney creation, but we've found a Venice tha exists for itself. We've found the diversity, shop keepers who are charming, others who seem chronically grumpy, no matter what they are selling. It really is the luxury of time, being able to go to places twice, because if you can go somewhere twice, there's the start of a relationship. Venetians are surprised at how long we've stayed here – I believe the average visitor stays for a couple of nights – but the only reason that we've stayed for eight weeks is that we could not stay longer.

Peter_S_Aus

Ann / Annhig, I'll put a web address for our apartment owner, who is in America. It's cost us about 800 Euro a week, which is pretty fair, and it's comfortable.
Well heated, too!

Good kitchen, nice balcony / sun deck, views over gargens, quiet street, but dead easy to find.

Or try Googling 2878a, Calle Lunga San Barnaba and see what you get.

Cheers

Peter

annhig

Hi peter,

I did as suggested and googled the flat. from your descriptions you are presumably in the 2nd floor apartment. Have you been able to use the terrace much?

how have you found being in one place for so long? would you have liked to stay longer? would you recommend Venice for a long stay? I do hanker after doing something like this [possibly in Rome rather than Venice] but sadly it's just not practical for us at the moment, though I did mention it to DH the other day. His reaction?.."off you pop". bless.

regards, ann

gertie3751

This is an outstanding report on Venice. Did you stay in the place in Miss Garnet's Angel?

marisylvia

Thank you, Peter, for your evocative Venice musings.
My husband and I rented a flat in Dorsoduro for 2 1/2 weeks in the spring of 2005. We, too, pulled the shopping wheelie along the Zattere to Billa. We were equidistant between the Zattere and the Accademia on the Grand Canal, and enjoyed also the little shopping area by the Accademia, including the portable fishmonger and the ladies in the hardware store who speak absolutely no English, so we tested out basic Italian on them.
I was pleased you started your musings with the silence which enables you to hear the morning bells. So true.
Like you, we were so enchanted that we booked an apartment for a month in April/May. I will never forget the asparagus tied with a vine--so artistic, with the best flavor I have ever tasted.
It has always bothered me that tourists say Venice is a Disneyland. Great, then don't go. Don't spoil it for those who appreciate Venice's eternal allure.

flygirl

bookmarking!


hahaha just kidding.

Peter, what a great report, I've really enjoyed it. One more week. It goes so fast. You are doing what I long to do - spend an appreciable amount of time in just one spot.

Peter_S_Aus

Here's a link to the apartment, and we're staying in the second floor apartment. If we could stay longer, we would, and we are thinking that we might be back here in a couple of years. Probably not for eight weeks, because of work, costs and stuff, and we'd come a little later in the year, and pick up the first part of carnivale.
We've used the terrace a little over the last week, as it's starting to see some sun, and the weather is warmer - we saw 13 degrees yesterday!

http://RealVeniceVacationFlats.com

Peter_S_Aus

Probably the last but one post - sorry for all the typos, but I have no spell checker. But maybe I'll back edit the whole thing and post a coherent narrative.


24.
I think that Venice 101 should be a compulsory subject for urban planners, the subject to be taken on site, in Venice. I live in Melbourne, a city of 2.5 million, an eighty kilometre traverse from one side to the other. It's enormous, with traffic and communication problems that increase exponentially as it grows. The normal suburban house sits on a quarter acre plot of land or thereabouts. It is a recipe for urban sprawl, and car ownership becomes mandatory – even the layout of streets renders walking almost impossible, the streets being arranged as cul de sacs off cul de sacs off cul de sacs. It can take a walk of half a kilometer to reach the house over the back fence.
In Venice, the residents of East Castello have to leave their car – or bus or train – about four kilometres from their homes, and either walk or take a ferry. It sounds hard, but either the walk or ferry ride will allow them to meet people, to socialise, to reinforce their community. (It keeps them fit, too – you don't see too many tubby Venetians.) You can't get that on the freeway, or when you drive into your garage via the remote controlled door, walk into the house direct from the garage. Even people that live on Mazzorbo are closer to the action, in spite of a 45 minute ferry ride, than many people in Melbourne – and the ferries run all night.
Visualise an ideal community. People know one another, people look out for each other's children, there's action in the streets, and the streets are safe. People can get to where they want to go on foot, or by decent public transport. Houses are modest but adequate, and generally not pretentious. Shops are local, and traders and customers know each other. The community is pretty much free of crime, public drunkeness does not happen, air pollution in minimal. Universities lend colour and life, night clubs don't exist. There is an equal number of bookshops and shops selling televisions. Life expectancy is high, and there's good standard of medical care.
Sounds like Venice to me, and the whole thing happened by accident.
But also, visualise this community. Rentals are steep, everything has to be carried by hand, drainage is a massive problem, the infrastructure is stressed, street excavations are done by hand, tourists make the place difficult for five months a year, there is little or no true industry, and where the resident population is both declining and ageing. Access for disabled is poor at best, and there is no way to correct this without destroying the city. The housing stock has a mean age of some hundreds of years, and much is in need of expensive repairs or renovation that would destroy the character of the city. Costs are high, because of transport by boat, rates are high because all municipal works, like garbage collection and street cleaning, are costly to undertake.
That's Venice too, and the existence of Venice is almost a contradiction in terms.


25.
I work as an engineer, and at the end of each project we attempt to do a “Lessons Learned” session, what worked for the project, what was a really bad idea. (Sometimes the really bad ideas were so bad that nobody wants to talk about them, and often the lessons learned get forgotten. Too often I have to say “I tried this, and it was a total, unmitigated disaster”. But we try.)

So, Venetian Lessons Learned.
Visit Venice in Winter. Sure, it's cold, but there are no crowds. We have never stood in line for anything. If there are acqua alta problems, invest in some rubber boots, which will cost about 25 Euro, and well worth it.
Maps – Buy a Hallwag 1:5,500 map of Venice – it has a good street finding index in it, the best I've found. It is probably too bulky cart around with you, but shows pretty well every street you would need, along with hotels, churches, traghettos.
The Moleskine City Guide for Venice is good. It's blank, except for a good map, street finder, waterbus map and some useful info. It is a guide book you have to write yourself, and is pocket sized. I don't leave home without it. Beware the street finder in it – for example, the Calle della Donna Oneste – the “Street of the Honest Woman”, which I wanted to find, is indexed as “Onesta Donna, Calle della”, so can take a bit of interpreting. The map is a bit scant on detail for major attractions, such as various Scuole. Moleskines cost 15 Euro in Venice, but you'd want one before you leave home.
Walking – you will do lots. A bit of a standard circuit for us is San Barnaba – San Marco – Rialto – San Polo – San Barnaba. I wore a pedometer one day – it's 6500 steps, about 5 kilometres, plus the bridges. So good shoes are a must – I know it is stating the obvious. As the crow flies, it's 6 km return from San Barnaba to San Pietro in Castello, probably more like 9 km with the zigs and zags.

Visits.
Often you'll enter a church or whatever, and find it scaffolded out. Relish it. It would have been the same 500 years ago when the monument to some notable, Doge or rich guy was being erected. All these edifices have a life, and it goes on. Take the time to check out what's being done behind the screens, as it's Venice at work. The movement of the campanile of the Frari is being measured to one hundredth of a millimetre – and if they keep on doing that, our great grandchildren will be able to admire it. Take the time to read the science and pure geniius behind the restoration work – it is the finese Italian engineering, and they know all about brilliant structures. Venice is more than Tintorettos, and the Romans, after all, did invent concrete.
Eating.
Breakfast is reputed to be the most important meal of the day, which is why many Italians take a slug of grappa in their morning coffee, and not much else. It's fun to have breakfast as Venetians do. Walk into the bar, order a coffee, and help yourself to a croissant, a brioche, from the warm cabinet on the counter. It should cost no more than 3 Euro (2.10 at our local bar, the Ai Artisti in Campo San Barnaba). It gets you going in the morning, and it's fun to be out and about as shops are opening, street sweepers are hard at it, and the fish at the Rialto fish market is gleaming. Better than sitting in the hotel dining room, grazing the buffet breakfast, and if you go to the same bar each time, the staff will quickly get to know you. Cappucino is not taken after mid-day.
Lunch – bars do panini, little rolls with ham, cheese, whatever, which cost about 2 Euro. Good value with a spritz, which is sparkling Prosecco, soda and a slug of Campari or Aperol. They are more alcoholic than one would imagine. A spritz costs 2 Euro, and is the drink of choice here. Our postman has one with his morning coffee at precisely 10:00.
Pre-dinner drink – try the bar Arancina, near the Ca' Rezzonico, Calle Foscari, 5255 Doroduro. Finger food seems to be free, 2.00 for a spritz, and the barman is nice.
Supermarkets. Small change is a chronic problem in Italy, and if you hand over the correct money, you'll win a friend for life.
Language – will always be a problem. We've found the phrase “Sono Australiiano, piccolo Italiano” works wonders in shops. i.e. “We come from Australia, we don't have much Italian, so please make allowances for us”. It invariably brings a smile, sometimes it opens a conversation, sometimes it brings a reply in perfect English. The question, “Do you speak English” is uncomfortable at best, a complete barrier at worst.

Books. Where to start. I've had the benefit of nine or ten guide books here, because every previous resident of this apartment has left a book.
I've enjoyed the “Venice and the Veneto – the Rough Guide” by Jonathan Buckley. It integrates the history and the built environment most admirably, and can be very funny - try the report of the May 9th, 1997 taking of the campanile of St Marks by soldiers of The Most Serene Venetian Government, armed, the 1998 Rough Guide informs me at page 72, with “a sub-machine gun, a bottle of grappa, and a few sets of crisply laundered underwear”. Not a shot was fired in the subsequent storming of the campanile, but one caribineri reported that a revolutionary swore at him in Venetian dialect. The incident was sponsored by Umberto Bossi, leader of the Lega Nord, the League of the North, aiming to create the Republic of Padania (where DO they get those names). Bossi's 2IC, one Robert Maroni, described the gang as a group of nut cases who had missed Carnivale by a couple of months. The editor of the Venetian rag reported that “The situation here is critical. There is an air of revolt”.
The National Geographic Traveller series – Venice – takes a more sober view to the city, and is good. Their maps work well, and the guide was most recently published in 2001. The odd inaccuracy, like “The Da Mosto family died out in the 16th century”, which would come as a surprise to Francesco (of whom more below), detracts in no way from the book, and it contains some really quirky information, which one would expect from a six year resident of Venice.
The Venice Tourist Board does a good little publication, sights in various areas. It's worth carrying.
Rick Steve's Venice 2005 contains gems such as “Venice is one of the cradles of the art form known as opera”. Rick Steve is known as the writer of a guide book that has more than a few incorrect statements – like the Bellini “was invented here by Hemingway in 1948” in reference to Harry's bar, and that the present Rialto bridge is the third.
There was a pontoon bridge in 1180, timber bridges in 1264 and 1310 (which sadly collapsed in 1444), so it's actually the fourth. I doubt that the foundations extend for 650 feet on each side as he states – this would take them clean under the law courts, church of San Giacomo Apostolo, (founded in 421, 428 or 540, and surviving the fire of 1514, so pre-dating the Rialto Bridge by about one thousand years at least), and finish up in the fish market. On the other side of the Grand Canal, the foundations would have extended through Campo San Bartolomeo, through the internet cafe, under the Rio dela Fava, almost to the steps of the church of Santa Maria de Fava. He's saying that the bridge plus foundations are three times the length of the Piazza – quote him if you like.
The arcade of shops, which the travel book writer known as Rick Steve says are to strengthen the bridge, were a later addition – there are paintings in Venice of the bridge ex arcade. But he's good for the occasional laugh. He brands the area west of the Grand Canal (San Polo, Dorsoduro and Santa Croce) as where “real Venetians” live, and one wonders what the residents of Castello, San Marco and Cannaregio would say to that – maybe they are not real Venetians.
He is mute on the Arsenale, the seat of Venetian military power for near a thousand years, but then, it's a fair stroll from the Piazza.
Mr Steve uses some quaint language, for example, in reference to the Doges, “Many others just put on their funny hat and accepted their role as figurehead and ceremonial ribbon cutter. Most were geezers, elected in their seventies and committed to preserving the Venetian traditions”. Tell that to Doge Dandolo, invader of Constantinople. Maybe Mr Steve does not indulge overly in checking his facts.
He does says one very true thing, though. “If there is a negative aspect to the image Italians have of Americans, it is that we are big, loud, aggressive, impolite, rich, and a bit naive”. and “... they nearly always afford us individual travellers all the warmth we deserve”. With his approach, the warmth may be a little frosty. Good book for the dedicated sight seeing tourist.
But the best books aren't guide books at all, and you don't need to be guided anyway. You can't see all the big sights no matter what, and art-fatigue is a real health hazard. Just go with the flow.
Venice, by Jan Morris, is brilliant. First written in 1960, and updated a couple of times, most recently in about 1988 I think. Buy a copy and fill it with post-it notes, against things like the Ponte Donna Onesta. It is a good read, as they say, a story with Venice as the main player. Although written in 1960, it still works. Morris sent me off in quest of the Bridge of the Honest Woman.
“Venice is a Fish” by Tiziano Scarpa, who is a Venetian, is good. It's a quick read – three or four hours would see you through it, and helps you to understand Venetians as well as Venice.
Venice by Francesco da Mosto is excellent, it's published by BBC books. Francesco made a TV series called Venice, which we watched on DVD, and it's good, I'd recommend it. He can make some claim to family fame – the Da Mosto Pallazzio still stands on the Grand Canal, covered in scaffold, right hand side, 300 yards upstream from the Rialto. And he's descended from Alvise Da Mosto, born in 1432, who was commissioned by Henry III of England (Henri III of France) to explore the west coast of Africa, discovering the Cape Verde islands. He weaves his family all through the book, providing a thread to the narrative, and there were both Da Mosto heroes and not a few villians. We saw Francesco's house and speed boat in Venice, but not the man himself. He has also done a book, “Francesco's Kitchen”, which is both history and recipes, and fun. We've used it a lot – razor clams, crabs, spaghetti with clams, artichoke.
I read “Beware of Falling Angels” by Berendt a couple of years ago, and it certainly gives an insight into Society in Venice, a slightly bitchy Society, I might mention, with the narrative strung together around the fire that destroyed La Fenice, the opera house. (“La Fenice” means “The Phoenix” - make sense of that.)
Novels set in Venice are fun, and I've read a few detective novels set here. They can give a real feel for the city.
All I could say is read heaps, and don't bring a guide book with you. Bring a sense of adventure, that's all. And a map. With scribbles on it.

26.
A sort of summing up.
This narrative runs to about 30,000 words, and it's still a work in progress. But the progress will have to suffer something of a hiatus. I know when I came, I intended to write, but I did not have much idea what I'd write about. Just let your fingers do the walking, I suppose, and see what ends up on the page. I certainly never intended to do a trip report, a diary, a “we arrived on th 8:16 which was seven minutes late, and found our hotel after 28 minutes. Lunch cost 5.87 Euro, but was good value”. I don't work like that, other than logging distance pedalled and average speed when I cycled around Australia (324 km in a 24 hour period, for the record, Katherine to Darwin). So I have done a kind of written ramble around Venice.
In Venice, the days have drifted past in a kind of historical haze, punctuated with coffees at our local, acqua alta, treasure hunts for odd things like Barbiero's head on a plaque (or platter), or Venice's narrowest street. There's been no big, significant events, it has just been a most delightful sequence of little events, small discoveries like the water colour painter that includes no gondolas in his scenes of Venice, or finding the church where they shot the elephant (San Antonin's, now sadly closed).

Peter_S_Aus

This is pretty much the end of the story now - until we come back to Venice.
27.
We ate at the Osteria “san Barnaba”, Calle Lunga san Barnaba, Dosoduro 2736. It's small – seats about 16 people, operated by a couple, and the menu is written in Italian only. However, the proprietor speaks excellent English, and steps you through the menu. We had smoked leg of goose as an anti-pasto, rabbit cooked in a casserole, and calves liver Venetian style, which is a standard here, along with grilled artichoke and a bottle of good local wine. The tab came to about 70 Euro, and this is probably the best meal we have eaten in Venice – it was great. We regret that we did not go there weeks ago, because then we would have visited there again. Closed on mercoledi and giovedi mattina.

We can't stop. We've discovered Tiepolo (Oh, derr!)
There's a great Tiepolo in the National Gallery in Melbourne, “The Banquet of Cleopatra”, and it's the finest work in the gallery, the absolute pride of the gallery. There's an occasional Tiepolo in Venice too, and we hit on them, almost by chance, in the Church of San Polo. A “Stations of the Cross” that reads like a film strip in fourteen frames, and a Resurrection that shows a most vigorous Christ, absolutely leaping towards Heaven, freed of all Earthly shackles. That's no passive ascension, being borne up on clouds, or on the wings of putti, or by some Heavenly thread. The eye is drawn to the red cloak of one of only two figures remaining on the ground, and he looks stunned, amazed, transfixed. Which is what Tiepolo was trying to say, I feel. It is a most emotive work.
The other fun thing with Tiepolo is that the same faces keep on turning up in his paintings, the same models. A man who attended Cleopatra's Banquet in the Melbourne painting is also in attendance in the Third Station of the Cross in San Polo. He's got a particularly cruel face, and also appears in a work in the Correr Museum. Tiepolo used relatives, brothers, his children as models – but I hope that particular man was no relative, or otherwise count the silver if you invite him to dine.
So we're tracking Tiepolo and his models all over Venice – there's a small problem, though – there's Giambattista Tiepolo, 1696 to 1770, his son, Giandomenico, 1727 to 1804, and Lorenzo Tiepolo, 1736 to 1776, and we are not sure how they all fit in. Bit of Wikipedia to unearth that, I think.
I become obsessed with finding the unusual things. Venice is reputed to have some 460 bridges, give or take a score or two, and only one has no parapet. Even the Rialto has a parapet of shops to prevent unwary tourists from taking a dunking. The fist fights on the Pont de Pugni happened in the pre-parapet days, and I guess the Republic saw fit to add parapets to all – well, almost all, bridges. The one without a parapet is over the Rio de San Felice, off the Fondamenta ditto, in Cannaregio, and I sought it out. It makes a fun photograph, and you've a fair chance of getting a photo without one of those ever present ubiquitous damn gondolas in frame.

Some things just leap off the wall at you, sort of, once you pause. Like the plaque on the wall that we've walked past and never paused to read, dated 1667, in the Campiello beside St Toma.

I've been mentioning the Ponte di Donna Onesta – the Bridge of the Honest Woman. “The only honest woman in Venice”, a wry husband remarked to a friend one day, “is that woman there”, pointing to a little stone figure carved on a wall above a bridge, according to Morris. The Bridge of the Honest Woman is at the end of Calle ditto, right beside the Trattoria Donna Onesta, and yes, there's a stone figure of a woman's face let into the wall. It is high on the left as you cross towards the Frari, about the size of a modest Carnivale mask. History recorded in a stone face.

So our days have been circimscribed, in some fashion, by the outrageously ordinary. We've seen the scaffold come down from No 2680 Calle Lunga revealing a nicely rendered yellow-ish facade, the drainage works in Rio terra Carita get finished, shops close for holidays and re-open. Bumped into a pleasant barman from near San Marco at the Asian grocery near Rialto, buying food for his girlfriend who is Japanese (he's English), met up with a monster ginger tortoise-shell cat who lives on the window sill of an antique shop in Calle Capeller, and stroked it, as does everyone else who walks past. It arches its back and purrs, and must be the best known cat in all of Venice. We've watched the antique restorer opposite the cat finish off the bow fronted four drawer chest with mother of pearl inlay, and move onto a wooden crucifix and replace some veneer on a Roccoco piece, most delicate work. He wears a dustcoat , collar and tie to work.
The work on No 2686 proceeds slowly, and they've hung the new doors. It looks like it will be a shop of some sort, not a bar because there's no plumbing. We'll just have to come back and find out. We've seen the Arancina bar finish its fit out and open, and had time to make friends with the owner and another barman, and seen the Pane e Vino bar open up the street, but it's got a wide screen TV and advertises Turin vs Milan, 14:30 so we are unlikely to patronise it. I've observed boats coming and going at the squero, gondolas being pulled out for anti fouling and a nice black paint job, but more often, everyday work boats being slipped for work. Tiny happenings in the great scheme of the Cosmos, but they make us feel part of a city that is alive.
We've seen the shops go from Christmas, to New Year and now Carnivale, and swim wear replace winter clothes, and we've seen the sun advance a little each day. Confetti is being thrown about by children, until their mothers get grumpy and say “Basta!”, “Enough, Finish”. We've attempted to circumnavigate the fourth column of the Doge's Palace facing St Marks Basin, starting at the Adam and Eve corner. Try it – you'll tumble off towards the basin. Try any other column and you'll make it.
The longer we stay here, the more Venice seems like a country town. Yes, the tourist industry keeps it going, and without visitors the economy would collapse. But wherever there is something that people want to see or experience, then some sort of facility will be built to service them. Ularu in Central Aus exists because people want to come and view a (very) large rock. Whistler exists because people want to slide down hills with planks strapped to their feet, Euro-Disney and all the other synthetic theme parks exist because people want to see stuff. Venice existed because it had wealth beyond comprehension, and that wealth has left the legacy that we come to see today. It's more than a tourist town, it's no theme park, not Hollywood or the Great Barrier Reef, not a Dubai on the lagoon or a Las Vegas in the desert. It's Venice.
Without a doubt, we've had time, and yet more time, being able to do deja vu all over again, so to speak. Losing places, and then re-discovering them, and thinking “I know I've beeen here, but I can't remember when it was”.

28.
Small diversion, a one act play in two scenes.
Scene 1, the Ai Artisti bar, Campo san Barnaba, mid-morning. Two Australian tourists enter, usual cappucini e' brioche, ciao, ciao in remarkably atrocious Italian. Conversation with one of the bar staff, and she gets to understand that we're leaving on Monday. She explains that she finishes at noon, won't be back before Monday, and so goodbye – all in Italian, rattled of like machine gun fire, while her colleague says to her something like “Cento per cento non capisco tutto”, which tourists take to mean, “They 100% can't understand what you are saying”, to which she laughs and says, “Si, si, capisco” - “Yep, I know thay can't understand what I'm saying, but I'm not about to talk English”. The Australian tourists are fully aware that she has actually quite good English, which she refuses to use, and makes no concessions to their broken – at best – Italian. She mostly pretends to not understand them when they speak English, and she knows that they know that she speaks English.
Scene 2, the Air Artisti bar, later that morning. Same Australan tourists enter with a small gift for the staff – some chocolates – and say that they'll be back in a couple of years. Same girl expresses her thanks in machine gun Italian, and seems a little touched as well. Tourists retire gracefully, but knowing they've had the last laugh – the card with the gift is written in poor Italian, but also in passable but somewhat emotive English. She'll have no alternative but to interpret it for her colleagues.
The sirens has just gone off – acqua alta of 110 cm, which means that, as they say, “Streets full of water”. Calle Lunga San Barnaba will have about three inches of water in an hour, so we'll pull on the rubber boots and head out for several spritzes.
We're in need of the crutch of alcohol, and we're playing “The Songs of Leonard Cohen”, aka “Songs to slash your wrists by”, free scalpel blade included with every CD.
We're going to miss Venice horribly.
29.
The sirens went off again at 6:00 this morning, the double tone siren which indicates a tide of 120 cm. There is one small advantage to acqua alta – it sluices out all the remnant dog droppings, so we'll see nice clean streets. In the meantime, there are bags of garbage floating down the street like so many barges on the Rhine, and the sump pump in the ground floor apartment is churning away.
It's 10:00 now, Saturday 7th February, bucketing rain, and today is the first day of the pre-Carnivale carnival. It's just about high water right now, as I can't see any flow coming up out of the drains. In 20 minutes, I should be able to see debris heading south, tidal flow demonstrated by confetti heading into the drains and towards the lagoon, and I'll be able to sort one of the world's greater conundrums – does the flow go clockwise or counter clockwise down the plug hole in the Northern hemisphere. Counter clockwise, for the record.
The sound of heels on stone, the “dock dock dock” of footsteps has been replaced by the “splosh splosh splosh” of people in waders, including the postman who is right on time – he leaves his mail trolley at the linen shop every morning at 10:00, and has a coffee with the linen shop lady at Ai Artisti, and then continues his rounds. The mail must get through. The occasional non-local plods up the street, wearing garbage bags over their shoes – a less than totally effective way of maintaining dry feet. Garbage collection will be problematic, as the garbage boat won't pass under the Ponte San Barnaba for a couple of hours yet. Very high water really limits what boats can do – the operators must have a mental map of bridges vs. water levels.

30.
We made it to Quadri's at the same time that the acqua alta hit about 110 cm. The Quadri people were more interested in attempting to keep things dry rather than serving a pair of idiots like us sitting in eight inches of water. So we got to rent a table for free – but no hot chocolate or coffee, which saved the Visa card from taking a significant hit. But at least we have a photo of us at almost Quadris. We're planning our departure against the chart for acqua alta, because there's a good chance we could be marooned, or find ourselves lugging our gear through six inches of water to the vaporretto, which would be a literal dampener.

We're planning a return visit in a couple of years time, and we'll crack Quadris.

31.
Errors and Omissions – aka The Truth not to Everyone.
I know there are errors.
I said that the head between the paws of a stone lion at the base of the San Polo campanile was the head of Doge Falieri. It's not – the lion pre-dates Falieri by some hundreds of years. Got that wrong. Venetians believe the other lion, devouring a fish, represents the State getting rid of Falieri, and that the other head is of a man beheaded for treason, but that's not what the carvers of the lions believed at the time. So we're all wrong.
I've got no idea where I'm at with Tiepolo, other than the clan are pretty complex. It's not made easier by the guide books, who say “work by Tiepolo”, but don't say which Tiepolo they mean, and there are three of them, maybe more!
I was wrong about the clock tower in the Piazza – the digital date function is actually a digital time function. So, when I sad that the date was XI – XII it probably meant that it was twelve minutes past eleven. Forgive me on this one – I was there on 11th December, so it did make sense.
Mose – the lagoon protection system. There's more to this than meets the eye, environmental clean up at Mestra and Marghera, locks around the barriers for fishing boats and large ships, and strengthening the barrier islands. It's huge. There is an information centre in Campo San Stefano, No 2949 from memory, on the side away from San Marco – look for a small vertical red sign outside. Interactive displays, and a great satellite picture of the lagoon, sized about A1, which makes a great memento. The satellite photo gives an excellent insight into how and why Venice existed in the first place, and the info centre is worth a 10 minute visit. The sat map is free.
I referred to Rick Steves as Rick Steve, and was far less critical of his book than I could have been. It is the most culturally insensitive guide book I have ever seen.
I stated that a 12 hour ferry pass costs 14 Euro – the price is now 16 Euro. The Commune d' Venezia has upped the prices on everything, and public toilets are now 1.50 instead of 1 Euro.
I stated that we'd found the place where water was piped ashore in 1848, because we'd seen a small stone tablet on the Fondamenta Nuove, just north east of the rio Gesuati, corner of Salizzada Specchieri and Fondamenta Nuove. Water is piped across the Ponte della Liberia, so it doesn't come ashore on the Fond. Nuove. I have no idea what Venice did for water when the revolutionary forces led by Manin blew up arches of the causeway in the mid-1800's. This did not stop the Austrains from dis-mounting their field guns to obtain more elevation, allowing them to lay artillery fire as far as the Ponte d' Rialto. There's a cannon ball bricked into the wall of our apartment.
I referred to the tune that the bells play in our local campanile, the Santa Maria dei Carmini, as “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam”, a recollection from Sunday school in Melbourne in 1957. I faied Sunday School 101, which sadly did not prevent me from being forcibly re-enrolled for a couple of subsequent terms. I believe that the tune is actually the first bars of the Hymn of Lourdes, “Hallay, Hallay, Hallahluiar”, with apologies to the Sisters of the Carmini for the spelling.
I said that the campanile of St Toma was pulled down and replaced in 1902 after being weakened by an earthquake. I was wrong – it was the campanile of San Stefano that was demolished and replaced in 1902, the same year that the San Marco campanile fell, and one wonders if San Marco was a victim of the same earthquake. However, this clears up a little mystery too – the St Toma campanile fronts the Calle Campanile, and the houses behind are inscribed 1667 AD or thereabouts, so I think the little St Toma campanile is quite old.

There are, of course, other errors. Venice does not reveal the truth to everyone, and she always holds a bit back - for the next visit.



32.
I figure that if I'm going to belt out 30,000 words about Venice and our time here, it is appropriate to mention the books that I've referred to. Every one of them has made the experience richer, our time in the city known la Serenessima, the Serene One, more enjoyable.
Frommer's Portable Venice 2007
Access Forence and Venice 2003
Spiral Guides Venice 2007
Rick Steves Venice 2005
Scarpa, Tiziano Venice is a Fish 2000
National Geographic Traveller Venice 2001
Eyewitness Travel Italy 2006
The Rough Guide Venice and the Veneto 1998
Essa & Edenbaum Chow! Venice 2007
Phaidon – Wallpaper Venice-City Guide 2008
Eyewitness Venice and the Veneto 1997
Lonely Planet Venice – City Guide 2004
Time Out Venice, Treviso & the Veneto 2005
The Venice Tourist Board Venice and the Islands 2006
da Mosto, Francesco Francesco's Venice 2007
da Mosto, Francesco Francesco's Kitchen 2007
Morris, James Venice 1960
Moleskine Moleskine City Notebook Venezia 2007
Baedeker Guide to Northern Italy 1905

33.
Sunday, 8th February 2009.
Acqua alta at about 115 cm, which seems most appropriate. Venice is all about water.

annhig

hi again, Peter,

is the osteria you speak of the one that serves no fish? on the left as you walk into Dorsoduro from the grande canale end of the calle lunga?

in which case we had our "last supper" [actually a last lunch as we had to leave Venice before supper to catch our flight home] there too. DS still talks about the huge pile of meats of various types he enjoyed, swimming in the biggest plate of polenta I've ever seen. If memory serves, we all had just one course as we got there after 2pm, but didn't stint on those, and wine, water, etc. and it was less than €100 for the 4 of us. it's certainly a place I would try to find again on another visit.

Tell me [or as I'm learning to say, "vuol' dir'mi" - I loved your description of your encounters with the adamantly non-english-speaking waitress] which of you first came up with the idea of this extended stay? and how did s/he persuade the other to do it? I need some tips!

it's been a joy to read your post, and I'll miss it now it's finished.

where next? can we all come?

regards, ann

gertie3751

What a great article on Venice. I agree with you on the merits of James Morris in 1960, it was my inspiration too. My reference was to
Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers, a whimsical story set in Venice which was a big hit in the UK around 2002 and is set in Campo San Barnaba. When I was last there the church was closed for restoration. And the trattoria you mention was full of local people having some kind of family party.
Presume you have also read Mary McCarthy's Venice Observed? Donna Leon's detective novels which are good on local colour?
Your article is great on the often un-remarked-on bits of Venice: the buildings, architecture, little local bars, obscure campos only fallen over by chance, places you only see when you have a long time to mooch around. I agree that winter is the best time to go; my first experience was in January 1992 and it was still the best after many repeats.
Thank you for this.