G'day Peter

I'm enjoying your Venice stories, adding to my list, although I'm not likely to be back for a while

Friday 16th May, we went on a cruise. Not on a monster cruise liner, but on a boat built in 1923. http://www.ilnuovotrionfo.org gives some details about the boat. Trionfo's were small cargo boats that plied the Adriatic, carrying general cargo, Istrian stone, produce and so on. Il Nuovo Trionfo is the last remaining of some thousands of boats, and you might see her moored beside the Punta della Dogana.

We sailed, or motored, as there was little wind, south along the Lido as far as Malamocco, past the island of Poveglia. Good to see Poveglia, presently subject of a citizens initiative to have the island stay in public ownership. http://www.povegliapertutti.org/ gives some photos, and what the group is trying to achieve.

Cruised part way out through the Malamocco entrance, which is being modified courtesy of The Mose barrier system, an enormous undertaking, about 7 billion euros. Once completed, the barriers will be deployed when a tide greater than 110 cm is anticipated. Apropos of nothing, 110 cm would see about 30 cm of water in front of Quadri in the Piazza.

There is a great web site, detailing the level of every street in Venice, so when you select your hotel for a December visit, you can decide whether wellies - or fishing waders - should be in your kit. http://www.ramses.it/index.php?optio...=114&Itemid=81 . Also interesting is how Venice is mapped and managed as islands - we are officially on the island of the Carmini, which also takes in Campo Margerita. Salute is an island in itself. Mostly when we get around here, we navigate from campo to campo, but the engineers, hydrologists and the layers of gas mains work on an island basis.

So, the Malamocco entrance, being Mosed, and I can imagine the sort of negotiations that might happen when a cruise liner is wanting to enter at a time of acqua alta, when the tide is forecast at say, 111 cm. "Come on, Giacomo, it's only one cm over the barrier raising trigger. We have two thousand on board wanting to see Venice. Hold off on raising the barrier for half an hour, so we don't waste six hours bobbing around in the Adriatic."

Response per Giacomo: "With respect, sir, no way. Well, maybe we can hang off for twenty minutes. Get the pilot on board pronto, and confirm the tugs. And don't do a Costa Concordia on me. Ciao."

Anyway, we saw the pilot boat blast out through the Malamocco entrance to meet an in-bound container ship, bound for Marghera up the Petroleum Channel.

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Modest sized container ship loaded to the gunwales
Sailing from the Orient bearing forty foot cans
With a cargo of tellies
Spark plugs and bicycles
IKEA flat packs and "Murano" glass.

Sorry, John Masefield, "Cargoes", and more of the IKEA reference to come.


Sunday, and we were offered a uniquely Venetian experience. Our friends emigrated to Venice a couple of years ago, their possessions wrapped in a bandanna, borne on a stick over the shoulder, Dick Whittington style. Their goods have now caught up with them, almost like Sears delivering, per mail order, a kit house plus furniture and cast iron stove to a railway station on the Prairies.

Part of the delivery included a few books. Maybe not enough books to fill the State Archive here, reputed to have some 75,000 linear metres of shelving, but more than the odd paperback. Bookshelves were needed.

Trip to IKEA in Padua, described as Hell by our friend, returning with Billy bookcases, eschewing Helga the doormat and Sven the toilet brush. The Venetian experience started at Piazzale Roma, hellish appurtenances comprising five Billies and a trolley. Haul bookcases one by one over the Calatrava bridge, a further 600 metres to apartment over another bridge, up a couple of flights of stairs, and job done.

The main part of Hell, though, was manoeuvring the trolley through the hordes at the foot of the Scalzi bridge, a scene straight out of an Hieronymus Bosch painting, no Garden of Earthly delights unless one is looking at the right hand panel of the triptych, with appropriate references to Dante's Inferno, Bosch-is torments courtesy of minor devils, aka tourists. Shouts of "permesso", "avanti" and "attenzione" falling on deaf ears, "scusi" when the orange trolley found the odd shin.

Maybe it was the Australian accent used to deliver such warnings - I don't know. But anyway, that is how furniture is moved in Venice, a very Venetian experience, fun to be part of it.

Tuesday 20th May, we took a day trip to Vicenza. Fast train, taking about 40 minutes, blasting across the Veneto plain at about 100 mph. Last time I went to Vicenza was in mid-December, and the fields were covered in snow, and it was bitterly cold, this time Spring planting in full force, a very different landscape.

Vicenza is, of course, Palladio Centrale. We visited the Teatro Olimpico, walked around the Basilica Palladiana (an older building, the tower dating from the 12th Century, Palladio designed the loggia around the Basilica), the Palladio Museum and the Civic Art Gallery of Palazzo Chiericati, which is near the theatre.

If you visit,and are on a Palladio kick, then I'd suggest visiting the Palladio Museum first. The museum is housed inside an urban dwelling, the only such dwelling completed by Palladio in his lifetime. It gives great insight into where Palladio was coming from as an architect, shows drawings that Palladio did when he visited Rome, sketching and measuring architectural details from ancient buildings. There are models of many of his buildings, including the Rotunda. Palladio was an apprentice stone cutter in his youth, and knew a thing or two about stone - also about faking the appearance of stone and marble. He was seen as an economical builder, knowing when to use marble, and when to use plaster with marble dust in it to simulate stone. There is a model of a brick column, showing how wedge shaped bricks, like pizza pieces, were laid to create a circular column, and then rendered with cement, given a couple of coats of plaster, and a fine edifice results.

Palladio wrote "The Four Books of Architecture", first published in 1570, and the books define what is finest in Renaissance architecture. He was able to describe what details should be used in a facade, maybe a square cornice vs. a rounded cornice, depending on how the light and shade was to fall on the wall. From a distance, Palladio's architecture may seem repetitive, but once you get closer to the details, it can be understood on an intellectual level as well. It's no coincidence that the Melbourne Public Library, or antebellum architecture in the USA, show the same influence - somehow Palladio was able to get it just right.

Having wealthy clients would have helped. The loggia around the Basilica is interesting, as Palladio had to design the loggia to accommodate an existing, much older building, and the architectural tricks that he employed to make the design work are evident. All the arches are identical in form and size, but if you look, you can see how the column spacing varies - it's a bit hard to explain. But the fact that building details are more closely spaced at the corners makes the loggia look more solid, more substantial. The corner columns on the Parthenon are more closely spaced than the centre columns, for the same reason.

At the time of building the loggia, Palladio was on a stipend of 7 ducats a month, which was reasonable pay for a celebrity. The loggia cost some 60,000 ducats - or about 700 years salary for a celebrity. A formidable cost - which maybe explains why the loggia took 50 years to complete. A bit like Gaudi's cathedral in Barcelona.

I've never been able to figure how Palladio worked. There are a mass of drawings and documents, proposal drawings, working drawings, set-out plans. Some fairly simple, others beautifully rendered, maybe to convince clients that it was time to go to contract. Palladio's design office must have had a host of draftsmen, but you don't hear about them, in the same way as you don't hear about the drafties in the offices of the Corb, van der Rohe, Phillip Johnston et al. There must have been site clerks, quantity surveyors, quality assurance people, cost control, just like any modern building project, along with specialists knowing about erecting domes, laying drains, sorting foundations. The information is mute on these people, but I would love to know the back story about them.

One trick that was used, to obtain a good finish to brickwork, which can otherwise be a bit rough. Bricks were polished with silica sand and water on a rotating table, to bring them to an exact, uniform size. They could then be laid with fine, about one millimetre, layers of mortar. Polish the wall to remove any laying imperfections and voila, job done. Apply plaster, dress it to look like stone, and you've saved the client a bundle.

Palladio had a thing about the architecture of antiquity, and the Olympic Theatre gave him his chance to build an amphitheatre. Semi-elliptic seating looking down on the stage, a homage to the theatre at Olympia in Greece. The Olympic Academy commissioned the theatre, Palladio designed it, but died a year later, before it could be finished. There are references to the Labours of Hercules in bas-relief above the proscenium arch, maybe a reference to the worth of labour, the work ethic and so on. A good way of getting the message across to a populace that was illiterate. There are niches with statues of the Academy members who funded he job, and they are in good condition, being plaster but always under cover. The faces are of the Members, the more senior members garbed in togas, the more junior as warriors. But look at the statue at the very top left as you face the stage - the body is of a woman, showing breasts, but wearing armour, a Member of the Academy. Someone decided to re-cycle a statue in 1584, hoping it might pass un-noticed.

Behind the seating there are nine niches with statues. The centre statue, the statue in pride of place, is Palladio. Maybe as a way of avoiding controversy as to who should get the best spot.

The Civic Art Gallery is housed in the Palazzo Chiericati, built by Palladio in 1550. It is a great collection, starting in the basement. Recent restorations have uncovered Roman walls, including retaining walls made of amphora filled with broken brick and pottery, and Roman drainage tunnels. When the Palazzo was built, the foundations were punched down through the Roman remnants, leaving much of them un-disturbed. Really worth a look.

On the upper floors, you can see the development of painting, particularly Renaissance portraits, which are well explained in English, with reference to the iconography. For instance, one little girl holds a golden finch, a symbol of piety. It is recorded that she was later to become a nun, and maybe her life's path had been established at the time of the portrait. Many of the portraits have a diagram detailing who the people are, and what they later did in life.

There is a collection of "ancient" coins - except that many of them are not ancient. In 16th century Vicenza, anyone with the slightest claim to education, good manners and social acceptance was interested in antiquity. So there was a market for antiques, statues, coins and medallions. Most markets get corrupted if there is enough demand for product, and 1550 Vicenza was no exception. Enter the counterfeiters, making Roman coins and medallions, generally not detected as fakes. Anyone interested in my almost genuine Picasso? - I'll get in the mail once the paint has dried. PayPal is fine.

There is a great fresco of a naked charioteer, representing the Sun, being pursued by, I think, Diana, wearing a moon. The genitalia, both equine and male, are rendered in some detail, I think maybe as a bit of a joke.

Upstairs, on the top floor, is one man's collection of art - sadly I can't remember his name, but he was wealthy and of good taste. There are several ink sketches by Tiepolo, maybe prelims for the fresco now in Ca' Rezzonico, the vision of the new world, showing mainly the backs of people. A Picasso, and a host of other works. It's interesting to see such a collection, many periods and styles, a way of getting inside the head of the collector himself, who may have been a bit of a snob. There is displayed, safely under glass, an engraved invitation - the invitation being from Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, asking could she have the pleasure of his company for luncheon on the Royal Yacht Britannia, in about 1953.

A couple of spritzes in passing, a couple of proseccos, a couple of paninis, and a most satisfying day all round.

Andre Palladio, born 30th November, 1508, died 19th August, 1580. Leaving a most remarkable legacy.

THanks for sharing Palladio with us, Peter, and your hilarious account of furniture delivery in Venice, BTW.

On the off-chance that our group trip to Venice comes off next February, would it be worth doing Vicenza or Padua as 1/2 day trips? the language school is likely to finish at about 1pm, so we'd be able get to wherever we had picked by 2.30 I would have thought.

Assuming that we'd want to be back in Venice by about 8pm at the latest, would that be long enough to achieve something worthwhile?

topping

Anne, where is your language school located in Venice? If you know that already ...

I think that we will be attending the Istituto Venezia in Campo Santa Margherita which I believe is in Dorsodoro, but it won't be fixed until mid September when we start back with our italian lessons.

not very convenient for the station!

I'm still reading your wonderful but did you see Sorolla's "Sewing the Sail" in Ca'Pesaro? It's what got me hooked on his works.

It took us 3 trips before we got into the Gesuti--amazing.

The lace-making is fascinating. With directions from a Reader's Digest book of crafts, I learned to do a bobbin or pillow lace sampler. And the stitches didn't approach being as fine as lace those ladies produce.

Ironically, I might have been looking at "Earthly Delights" when you were moving those shelves. Thanks for the mind picture. Know your friend was glad to have your help.

Palladio's Rotunda had been on our "to see" list after a visit to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. After visiting Rotunda, we only had time for a stroll through Vicenza proper and missed the museum. Good to read your description.

Keith and I visited Vicenza last July to view La Rotunda.

Keith dropped our picnic lunch--Billa poppyseed rolls and Montasio cheese-- in a puddle at the side of the road!

Oh, was I angry at him.

It was a nice day, however, and I made him buy me a bottle of Veuve Cliquot for the train ride back to Santa Lucia Station.


And, yes, I made Keith buy me a Murano goblet to drink my Champagne out of.

I do not drink from a paper or plastic cup!

Thin

Anne, a half day trip from Venice to Vicenza is doable. Your class finishes at 1:00, and it is 15 or 20 minutes walk from Campo Margerita to the railway station. (Took us 15 minutes a couple of days ago). There is a 13:20 PM train that gets into Vicenza a little after 14:00, and the walk from Vicenza station to the old town is about ten minute. (You walk up Via Roma - is there a single town in Italy that does not have a Via Roma?) Once you leave the station forecourt, as you walk up Via Roma, there is a park on each side of the road. It's really pleasant. Turn right onto Via Palladio, through the old city gate, and you are transported into Renaissance Italy.

The old town is great, mostly pedestrian and bicycle, very pleasant.

Olympic Theatre is closed on Mondays, last admission at 16:30
Civic Art Gallery - closed Monday, last admission at 16:30
Palladio Museum - Closed Monday, last admission at 17:30, closes at 18:00.

So it would be quite doable.

Padua is also doable, about ten minutes less on the train. We find Padua less intimate than Vicenza, for instance in central Padua here are many high-end stores (think Prada et al) and it is more busy, motor scooters and such. The Scrovegni chapel in Padua is special, and you do need to book, and we enjoyed the Botanical Gardens. Padua is bigger than Vicenza, so you spend more time walking.

We arrived in Vicenza around 10:00 AM, left around 17:30, saw as much as we wanted, plus about one and a half hours devoted to wine etc.

I forgot one thing we saw in Vicenza. In the Civic Museum, there is a small display of arms, just a single cabinet. Several stilettos, needle sharp, similar diameter to a pencil, a mace, a halberd and a dagger. The dagger is calibrated, so that it could be used as a measuring stick, in theory to check cannon ball diameter against cannon barrel bore. A fairly useless way of checking.

The real reason - Vicenza outlawed concealed weapons. But the calibrated dagger could be claimed as just being for measurement, not intended to be in any way harmful. Yeah, right!

I could foresee Smith and Wesson getting onto this, a way around the "concealed carry" restrictions in the USA.

"Smith and Wesson - WE HAVE YOUR MEASURE.
Get the latest S&W firearm, graduated in inches for traditionalists, in centimetres for the up and coming bros in the 'hood. Ignore safely those pesky concealed carry restrictions, and useful in IKEA for measuring whether your wide screen TV will fit in the wall unit."

Or to quote Dirty Harry aka Clint Eastwood, "Go ahead, punk. Measure my day".

Peter, that's really helpful and makes me think that although it may be 10 mins longer on the train, Vicenza would be a better goal for a 1/2 day trip.

It took us 3 trips before we got into the Gesuti--amazing>>

TD - it really is, isn't it?

But Padua is such a pretty tiny city, canals and odd little buildings everywhere.

A couple of rather different experiences, visiting Sant' Erasmo and the Palazzo Fortuny.

Sant' Erasmo is an island east of Venice, and in land area is about the same size as Venice. It is almost totally given to vegetable growing, particularly artichokes and asparagus, but we saw plantings of tomatoes as well.

We took the No 13 vaporetto from Fond. Nuove, which calls at Murano (and thus loses most of the passengers), then on to Vignole and Sant' Erasmo. It runs about every hour. You change vaporetto at the Capannone stop on Sant' Ersamo, as a smaller boat continues the voyage towards Tre Porti, down a pretty tight channel. We went as far as the Chiesa stop on San't Erasmo - one stop, and about ten minutes along from Capannone, and then walked.

There is not much at Chiesa - a modern church and a small supermarket - and you walk down narrow roads, passing vegetable gardens and being passed by people on bicycles, and little three wheeled Vespa trucks. It is very peaceful and quiet.

There is a vaporetto stop at the very south tip of the island, at Forte Massimiliano, but it is on a seasonal vap route, not running much. There is a bar at the fort - Bar Tedeschi, and I've no idea why there would be a German bar, as we did not sight any lederhosen, nor hear any oom-pah-pah music. There is also a hotel and bar about half way between the Capannone vap stop and the fort, and it is a 15 minute walk from Capannone to the fort. We had a drink at the hotel, and as we were leaving, a wedding party arrived, groom wearing top hat and morning suit, bride in peach, for one of those lunches that continue until it gets dark.

The fort is a huge brick structure, recently restored with some pretty clever architecture. There are apertures for cannon, plus loopholes for small arms, and remnant concrete mounts for more recent armaments. Worth a look if it is open when you visit - it was closed when we went there - and it must be amazing inside, powder magazines, hoists for shells, all the gear needed to prevent ships from sailing up the Porta di Lido and on to Venice.

Many people would like to see fewer cruise liners arrive in Venice. Re-arm the fort, and lay some shells across the bows of the cruise liners, I say.

We bought some small artichokes from a gentleman in a three wheeled Vespa truck, and they were very good. The soil looks very fertile, worked extensively by hand - horticulture conducted in a way that we don't see in Australia, where it is much more mechanised. If you are visiting, I'd suggest going only as far as Capannone on the vap, and then walk towards the fort - going as far as Chiesa does not add much..

I think that to understand Venice, you need to see something of the lagoon. You need to get out past Murano and Burano, to appreciate how big the lagoon is, how still it is, see the mud flats and observe how un-populated the islands are. I imagine that there are people living on Vignole and Sant' Erasmo that go to "downtown" Venice maybe once every year or two - the population is about 700.

The Palazzo Fortuny is a different story altogether. Possibly not on the "A" list of places to see in Venice, but really worthwhile. We went at 10:00 AM on a Monday, and the Palazzo was very un-crowded, excellent.

Most museums that we've visited have a linear focus, if that makes any sense. Maybe they are all about Venice, or all about the development of modern art, like the Guggenheim. Maybe a civic collection, like the Civic Gallery in Vicenza, or all about Palladio.

The Fortuny is really one families' collection. There were four temporary exhibitions on display, as well as the Fortuny pieces.

A collection of photographs, collected by Mario Trevisan, about 60 works in all, including photographs by Dora Maar, Diane Arbus and Leni Riefenstahl. All the works are by female photographers. I'd never seen a Riefenstahl work "in person" before, and it was immediately recognisable, three German lasses performing calisthenics with skipping ropes, as fine an advert for Aryan youth as one could wish for. Leni lived to the ripe old age of 101.

The oldest works on display date from the 1870's, and the collection has works from as recent as 2013. There are a couple of photographs of Ophelia, by different photographers. One Ophelia is nude, lying in a swamp, strategically covered by patches of greenery. The other is also Ophelia in water, but a most pre-Raphaelite kind of work.

An "installation", photographed in the Guggenheim. The installation comprising about 15 nude women, faces obscured by masks, and all of the women being exactly the same size and shape. That must have been a tricky casting call indeed.

There is a collection of work by Dora Maar, at one time Picasso's woman, or perhaps one of Picasso's serial women. One series of photos was taken over two or three months, while Picasso painted "Guernica", and the series shows the development of the painting, from a quite detailed initial sketch through to the completed work. There would be about 20 photos, so she was maybe taking a photo every several days. One almost never sees how a painting develops, so the series is really instructive.

There are a lot of candid street shots by Maar, including several taken in London in 1934, depression, tough times, one of a gentleman, very well dressed, wing collar, tie pin, bowler hat in hand, selling matches. The whole story of someone reduced to poverty, a story told at ASA120, f16 and 1/60th. A life captured in the blink of an eye, a snap of the shutter. Reminded me of Orwell's book, "Down and Out in Paris and London".

The thing that is great about the Maar display is that they are scattered amongst other works and objects in the Fortuny collection, so it something of a process of discovery.

There is an exhibition of work by Anne-Karin Furunes, They are interesting - big works, about two or three metres square, portraits of women taken from photos in the Fortuny collection.
http://fortuny.visitmuve.it/en/mostr...-exhibition-9/ gives a good description. She creates her images by painting a monochrome canvas, generally black, and then punching holes through the canvas to create an image. It means that the creation process is actually one of subtraction rather than addition. When you stand some distance from the work, then the image is clear, but as you move closer, the image disappears. There is both an emotional and intellectual feeling as you see this - the photos that she based her works on are all of long-dead women. Somehow the feeling of time, the fact that you can't ever know those women, is made evident as you approach the work.

OK, enough of the temporary exhibitions, which finish on 14th July 2014. There is the permanent collection, and what a collection it is. Paintings, models of buildings, a pair of model stage sets, one complete with curtains, lighting that can be dimmed, overhead covering, the lot. Bits of statues, a Picasso painting (portrait of Dora Maar, while she was still in Picasso's good books), photos, fabrics, furniture, objects. One work, from 1966, an internal doorway that has been closed with dry-laid stone slabs, really making the statement that the doorway is closed, shut, sealed, never to be opened again. Remnant frescos, in places removed to show the frescos underneath, in places three layers of frescos evident.

The thing that makes it great is that it is one person's or one families' collection, so you can get inside their heads a bit.

All housed in the Palazzo that once belonged to the Pesaro family, and the Pesaro mob knew a thing or two about Palazzos and how grand they ought be.

Another artist of note, although perhaps not to be hung in the Accademia any time soon - Walter Berton. You'd find him on the street, at the Accademia end of Campo San Stefano, opposite San Vidal. Walter has painted heaps of Venetian scenes palazzzo/gondola/bridge etc, but he's done a series of paintings of gondoliers, and they are clever and fun. Gondoliers having hassles with seagulls - two of the symbols of Venice coming into conflict - or a gondolier pulling the tail of a very lifelike Venetian lion, with book. Have a look if you walk past, riffle through the reproductions (5 euro per, about A5 size), and he will not give you any sort of hard sell.

Don't count on gondoliers being particularly polite. We saw one disembarking, with some difficulty, a woman of size a couple of days ago, and heard him say "she's not Claudia Schiffer".

The soil looks very fertile, worked extensively by hand - horticulture conducted in a way that we don't see in Australia, where it is much more mechanised.>>

sounds like the area around Valencia, [the "huerta"] a little of which we saw from our train to Sagunto yesterday. Horticulture going on in a small scale, within a larger one, with many small individual plots growing tomatoes [which we saw in a market for only €1 for 4kgs, compared to £/lb here - why don't they export them to us, we get their oranges] lettuce, beans, and the remnants of lots of artichokes, which were more or less over. A way of life that is restricted t a very few places, i think. Even around here veg growing is done on a much more commercial basis - our farming neighbour before he retired would drill enough fields to plant 100,000+ cabbages in a day; a world away from the pretty rows of lettuces we spotted from the train.

sounds as if it's lucky that I've never been in a gondola and/or they've never heard of Hatty Jaques, Peter!

Thanks for the information about the Fortuny; I am gradually amassing a number of ideas for our possible trip in February, which will also include your artist friend Walter. I have a lovely print of a bridge and some gondola oars on my living room wall, but i see that it's not by him. I bought it from a shop near the Frari about 5-6 years ago and still remember the sigh of relief as I just managed to fit it into my suitcase!

We visited the Fortuny in July, 2012 for the Diana Vreeland exhibit.

Enjoyed sitting in the little courtyard patio.

We were disappointed that there was very little that related to Fortuny's career as a couturier.

Thin

Oh I made a gondelier very angry. I tried to ask how he didn't get lost and it must have come out wrong--he took us into choppy water!

Peter, did you see the Sorolla?

The mayor of Venice is presently under house arrest, standing accused of taking a 700,000 euro bribe from the consortium building the Mose tidal barrier system. I would have thought that this was a most modest amount, given that the Mose system is costing about 7 billion. He sold himself very cheaply, depressing the market for corruption to a considerable extent.

Meanwhile, protests against cruise liners continue, the most recent last weekend. "No Grandi Navi" flags are seen all over Venice, and the most recent marine target was the MSC Divina, 1000 feet long (the Piazza is less than 600 feet long), 18 decks, 4000 passengers and 1500 crew. A most fitting target, a ship amongst the ten biggest cruise liners in the world.

A nicely coordinated protest, both land based and water based. A big crowd at Piazzale Roma, some thousands, moving towards the berths at Statione Marittima, where the monster was berthed, intent on delaying embarkation. A line of riot police, plastic shields, helmets, batons, confronting the protesters who had armed themselves with inflatable beach toys. A sensible choice - no policeman will feel comfortable beating the tripes out of a girl protecting herself with a rubber ducky. So, tugs called up, pilot on board, can't exactly let go fore and aft when there are some hundreds of souls still to get aboard. A delay.

Second part of the protest - a fleet of boats in the Giudecca canal, lying in wait for the Divina, gross tonnage of said Divina being some 139,400, smallest protest boat being a single kayak, gross tonnage about 0.120, plus a fleet of police boats. No way to stop the protest boats moving up the canal, without risk of drowning a protester, which would close the canal for hours. Throw into the mix a bunch of water taxis, vaporetti, rubbish barges and tour vessels, and it's a lively scene. And serious delays to the Divina, not living up to her name, in an unholy mess.

Eventually the scene cleared, vessel sailed. But it will have cost the cruise line tens of thousands in delays, demurrage, tugs, plus the additional fuel oil burned to get to the next port on time.

One has to wonder if Venice has reached tourist saturation, with about 21 million visitors a year. It is high season now, a lot of people, and yet traders are commenting that business is slow. The hairdresser down the street is very quiet, shops selling high-end stuff are saying that there is not much custom. Shops that are on the tour-group route, where a bunch of visitors are led into the shop do OK, but the average traders are not doing so well.

I visited the Accademia, now devoid of construction work, a change after about six years. The inner courtyard is now visible, and a cafe might open there soon, with a bit of luck. I do enjoy the Carpacchio St Ursula cycle of paintings, in a gallery that is ripe for restoration. There is cracking in the walls, and so the gallery has been plastered with measuring equipment, courtesy of Save Venice, to track the way the building moves about. St Ursula went from England with a group of virgins to Cologne, where she was martyred along with the virgins. Rumour/legend has it that there were three thousand virgins, other legends claim ten thousand virgins, and the last painting in the cycle shows, in graphic detail, the fate of the virgins. Carved up with axes, swords, halberds, clubs, cross-bows, the whole gory armoury, almost as gory as the display of surgical instruments in the hospital library. St Ursula is totally unaware of the carnage, awaiting in a state of bliss the arrow that is to be shot into her breast.

You can get lucky - I chanced on the church of San Zaccaria when it happened to be open, and there is a fine Bellini, the best work in the church. Worth shoving a euro into the illumination box, and it will take your breath away. Bellini never was much into legless winged putti, rather decorating his works with children playing stringed instruments, lutes and such. You can see exactly the same instruments in the church of San Giacomo di Rialto, on the San Polo side of the bridge, a nice conjunction.

Tiepolo (or Tiepolos plural) drags me all over Venice, a bit of a quest, from the Accademia to San Alvise in Cannarigo, via San Polo, all courtesy of the Chorus Pass, the best value at about 10 euro. San Alvise still has an enclosed choir gallery for the nuns, connected to the monastery. The pass, plus map, encourages one to get off the beaten path, seeing, for instance, the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, a marble church that rivals the Gesuati. Not as elaborate, rather austere, but with exceptionally fine marble both inside and out.

The Architecture Biennale started last week, multiple yachts lined up along the Riva Schiavoni, yachts that in former times were described as "gin palaces". They've mostly gone now, and the Biennale is pretty quiet. I was wondering if I would enjoy the Biennale, or whether it might be a bit too esoteric for a non-archi, and I've really enjoyed a day at the Arsenale, another at the Giardini, and a day at various other locations around town, with several more to come.

The Korean pavilion. A combined pavilion, operated by both Koreas, north and south. When the pavilion was first proposed, the Biennale folk dictated that, "there's only one pavilion. Get along and get over it". So part of the pavilion hosts pictures of dedicated, well fed, happy tradesmen, constructing with enthusiasm a socialist workers paradise north of the 39th parallel. All the workers wear belts, supported by braces, and broad smiles. By contract, the south side has something to say about the social problems that can be created by architecture.

A similar theme was apparent at the Great Britain (Great Britain is not so much heard, replaced by the ubiquitous U.K.) pavilion, "A Clockwork Jerusalem" being the theme. Taking Blake's poem, applying it to contemporary architecture, with particular reference to the Thamesmead development. Thamesmead, developed in the 1970's. Abandoned as a suitable place for families, providing a place for squatters and heavy metal musos, a backdrop for Stanley Kubric, and demolished a decade or two ago.

Israel, a trio of A0 sized plotters, drawing diagrams in sand.

Germany. Impossible, the chancellors bungalow from Bonn recreated in Venice, along with a three thousand word commentary in 6-point font. A political statement, and I didn't get it. German nihilism maybe.

Italy. A 300 metre long installation in the Corderie in the Arsenal, Venice's longest building, with film, dance, installations, showcasing Italy, and also showcasing some pretty disastrous developments in Italy.

Albania. Paintings of ruins. Except that the ruins are just unfinished, never ever to be finished, buildings.

A full scale construction of one of Le' Corbusier's never-built structures. I've never really "got" Corb's architecture, but seeing a work at full scale makes it approachable.

The Stati Uniti d'America, aka the USA. A great resource - the curators have collected a compendium of work by American architects that have worked outside the USA, displaying it simply as a resource. So, for me, possible to see details of work by Walter Burley Griffin, who laid out our national capital, Canberra, and also designed Newman College at Melbourne University, a building that I know well.

And onto the Elements of Architecture in the central pavilion in the Giardini. Fascinating, looking at a set of architectural features. Floor, wall, window, balcony, stairway, escalator, door, corridor, facade, roof, toilet and so on. Interesting, in that architecture is about assembling elements into a building, but this display de-constructs the set. Rem Koolhaas curated this display, and said about the balcony "Without my parents' balcony, I would not be here. They lived on the 5th floor of a new social democratic walk-up. Born in the last months of the war, a cold but very sunny winter, when everything that could be burned had been burned, I was exposed to the sun, naked, to capture its heat, like a mini solar panel."

Which gave me cause to think.

And an architectural note, not connected to the Biennale. Carlo Scarpa is well known in Venice, Venice's favourite contemporary architect. The Olivetti showroom in the Piazza and the Querini Stampalia foundation are two of my favourite buildings in Venice, both done by Scarpa. A Cuban student of Scarpa designed, and managed the renovations, for the apartment that we are staying in, and submitted the building, plus its documentation, for his final year thesis. Scarpa's architectural handwriting is all over the apartment, not as a copy, more a homage to Scarpa's thought processes.

So, to conclude, in someone else's words, words heard on the street, a member of a little tour group to the tour leader, the accent somewhat south of the Mason-Dixon.

"Monica, we've passed a lot of shops selling masks. What's with the masks?"

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