The Sinking City

Gondolieri, both skillful and wary

The dedication of Venetian shopkeepers

Well this post has taken a long time. That's because we were in Venice for about 8 days, and there's a lot to see there. The short version of this is that I needed to go to Venice for 'research' purposes, and my supervisor happened to have a flat in the city, about 2 blocks (however you define a block in Venice) from St. Mark's square. So we decided to stay awhile.

The view from the Rialto bridge

Venice, in case you haven't heard of it, is an ancient city/city-state/sea-based republic on a series of islands in the northeast of Italy in the Adriatic Sea. It's about 1600 years old, and the history of that time takes more space than I have here. But I'll hit some high points:

Jumping in Piazza San Marco

St. Theodore had been Venice's patron saint for centuries, but in 828 Venice decided to upgrade patron saints to St. Mark (extra points for gospel writers). The only hitch in this plan was that they wanted St. Mark's bodily remains, which were in Alexandria. So after a series of failed attempts to steal the remains, a couple of Venetian merchants pulled a switcheroo and replaced it with some other body they had acquired. But since the Muslim Alexandrians were wise to previous such attempts by Venetians, they vigorously searched everyone leaving the city. To prevent the remains being confiscated, the merchants stored the body in a jar and covered it with pork. When the Muslims saw the pork, they let it go by since they weren't allowed to touch it. If the story isn't enough for you, there are frame-by-frame mosaics in the front of the Basilica San Marco (above) portraying all the slimy details.

The baroque grandeur of the Salute

Venice's unique development meant that it never had much need for roads of the usual kind (Mark Twain remarked when he visited it that most of the people living there had never seen a horse). Today, a highway and rail bridge go to the edge of Venice, but not much into the city itself. Thus its transportation has historically been based on the many canals that wind throughout the city. The original way to get around was to hire a gondolier, the stereotypically mustachioed and striped skipper of a gondola, which is basically a one-oared canoe. Lord Byron found that since most of Europe in his day was not wheelchair-accessible, Venice was the best city for getting around (if you're rich). Today, most of people get around on the public transportation boats, which go around the main island, through the Grand Canal, and to the various outlying islands.

The sun sets on the white facade of San Michelle en Isola

Speaking of which, if you're visiting Venice for any length of time, I highly recommend taking a day or two to check out the surrounding islands. San Giorgio and Giudecca to the south contain two of Palladio's masterpieces, the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore. If you go all the way to the southern end of Giudecca, you can find a public park with real grass that looks out on the sea (green space is hard to find in Venice). The island of San Michelle, directly north of the city, contains not only the first Renaissance church in Venice, but also the Venetian cemetery, where you can find the graves of Igor Stravinsky and Ezra Pound.

The many different shades of Burano

The islands further afield were my personal favorites - Murano is well known as the seat of the Venetian glass-blowing industry (they were hedging their bets in case of fire). Honestly, the tourism-saturation of Venice has spread to Murano; the canals are now lined with shops selling glass that's mostly made in China anyway. Burano, a little farther out, is known for its lacework: it has a more residential, less theme-parked atmosphere than Venice or Murano. Even farther out, Mazzorbo gives you a feel for what it would be like to live a real life on these charming islands: taking a boat to school in the morning, running laps around your small piece of land, and being annoyed at a lawnmower running on a neighboring island.

Eerie moonlight falls on the Doge's Palace and the Acqua Alta

But the coolest thing about this already other-worldly city is the Acqua Alta. This doesn't apply if you're one of the gazillion visitors who have the misfortune of visiting on the same muggy day in August. But if you venture out in the wintry off-season, you'll be treated to the nearly-nightly pleasure of watching the destruction of Venice in real time, as the water of Adriatic slowly seeps over the island, only to recede by the next morning. The long-term effects of this are not good for the city, and they're working very hard to stop it. However, the short-term effects are similar to that of when you go to sleep in a small midwestern town and wake to find 12 inches of snow on the ground: you have been transported to another world.

Jumping on what little land remains in the Piazza San Marco

Since not many tourists stay on the island itself overnight, we shared this strange dream with only a few others. It made not only for excellent photo ops, but also for lots of contemplation whilst tramping around in waterproof Wellington boots. One visitor had a remote-controlled toy motorboat that he wildly steered through the pool that had been St. Mark's Square. Each night a single cafe off the Piazza stayed open until midnight, and a small jazz combo played American standards from the 1930s as we watched the water climb out of the canals and into the windows of hotel lobbies. It felt a bit like being a passenger on the Titanic after the last life boats had gone away.

When an umbrella is no longer of any use

Mark Twain had been especially excited about Venice when he visited it aboard the Quaker City (the first American luxury cruise to Europe). But upon seeing it, he became fascinated and disillusioned with what he saw as a wonderful kingdom, centuries past its prime. The ruin or the Republic struck his notions of its greatness, and in his writings he seems shaken by the state of the city when he visited it. But, he adds

"In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and commerceless - forgotten and utterly insignificant. But in the moonlight, her fourteen centuries of greatness fling their glories about her, and once more is she the princeliest among the nations of the earth."

I couldn't agree more.

"to summon her vanished ships...and know again in dreams the pride of her old renown."

Laura and I agree that the only fair way to treat Venice is to give a separate rating for living there and visiting:

Living there - 2.0/10.0
Visiting - 9.0/10.0