Nobody arrives in Venice and sees
the city for the first time.
Depicted and described so often that
its image has become part of the
European collective consciousness,
Venice
can initially create the slightly
anticlimactic feeling that
everything looks exactly as it
should. The water-lapped palaces
along the Canal Grande are just as
the brochure photographs made them
out to be, Piazza San Marco does
indeed look as perfect as a film
set, and the panorama across the
water from the Palazzo Ducale is
precisely as Canaletto painted it.
The sense of familiarity soon fades,
however, as details of the scene
begin to catch the attention - an
ancient carving high on a wall, a
boat being manoeuvred round an
impossible corner, a tiny shop in a
dilapidated building, a waterlogged
basement. And the longer one looks,
the stranger and more intriguing
Venice becomes.
Founded fifteen hundred years ago
on a cluster of mudflats in the
centre of the lagoon, Venice rose to
become Europe's main trading post
between the West and the East, and
at its height controlled an empire
that spread north to the Dolomites
and over the sea as far as Cyprus.
As its wealth increased and its
population grew, the fabric of the
city grew ever more dense. Very few
parts of the hundred or so islets
that compose the historic centre are
not built up, and very few of its
closely knit streets bear no sign of
the city's long lineage. Even in the
most insignificant alleyway you
might find fragments of a medieval
building embedded in the wall of a
house like fossil remains lodged in
a cliff face.
The melancholic air of the place
is in part a product of the
discrepancy between the grandeur of
its history and what the city has
become. In the heyday of the
Venetian Republic, some 200,000
people lived in Venice, not far
short of three times its present
population. Merchants from Germany,
Greece, Turkey and a host of other
countries maintained warehouses
here; transactions in the banks and
bazaars of the Rialto
dictated the value of commodities
all over the continent; in the
dockyards of the Arsenale the
workforce was so vast that a warship
could be built and fitted out in a
single day; and the Piazza San
Marco was perpetually thronged
with people here to set up business
deals or report to the Republic's
government. Nowadays it's no longer
a living metropolis but rather the
embodiment of a fabulous past,
dependent for its survival largely
on the people who come to marvel at
its relics.
The monuments which draw the
largest crowds are the Basilica
di San Marco - the mausoleum of
the city's patron saint - and the Palazzo
Ducale - the home of the doge
and all the governing councils.
Certainly these are the most
dramatic structures in the city: the
first a mosaic-clad emblem of
Venice's Byzantine origins, the
second perhaps the finest of all
secular Gothic buildings. Every
parish rewards exploration, though -
a roll-call of the churches worth
visiting would feature over fifty
names, and a list of the important
paintings and sculptures they
contain would be twice as long. Two
of the distinctively Venetian
institutions known as the Scuole
retain some of the outstanding
examples of Italian Renaissance art
- the Scuola di San Rocco ,
with its dozens of pictures by
Tintoretto, and the Scuola di San
Giorgio degli Schiavoni ,
decorated with a gorgeous sequence
by Carpaccio.
Although many of the city's
treasures remain in the buildings
for which they were created, a
sizeable number have been removed to
one or other of Venice's museums.
The one that should not be missed is
the Accademia , an assembly
of Venetian painting that consists
of virtually nothing but
masterpieces; other prominent
collections include the museum of
eighteenth-century art in the Ca'
Rezzonico and the Museo
Correr , the civic museum of
Venice - but again, a comprehensive
list would fill a page.
Then, of course, there's the
inexhaustible spectacle of the
streets themselves, of the majestic
and sometimes decrepit palaces, of
the hemmed-in squares where much of
the social life of the city is
conducted, of the sunlit courtyards
that suddenly open up at the end of
an unpromising passageway. The
cultural heritage preserved in the
museums and churches is a source of
endless fascination, but you should
discard your itineraries for a day
and just wander - the anonymous
parts of Venice reveal as much of
the city's essence as the
highlighted attractions. Equally
indispensible for a full
understanding of Venice's way of
life and development are expeditions
to the northern and southern
islands of the lagoon, where the
incursions of the tourist industry
are on the whole less obtrusive.
Venice's hinterland - the Veneto
- is historically and economically
one of Italy's most important
regions. Its major cities - Padua
, Vicenza and Verona -
are all covered in the guide, along
with many of the smaller towns
located between the lagoon and the
mountains to the north. Although
rock-bottom hotel prices are rare in
the affluent Veneto, the cost of
accommodation on the mainland is
appreciably lower than in Venice
itself, and to get the most out of
the less accessible sights of the
Veneto it's definitely necessary to
base yourself for a day or two
somewhere other than Venice -
perhaps in the northern town of
Belluno or in the more central
Castelfranco.
