NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
Despite being born and raised in Italy, and having rarely left the country for longer than a week, I had never been to Venice in more than 40 years of life. Yeah, that's how much of a traveler I am. This year though, when someone offered me a weekend there for a congress I would have no obligation to attend in full, I took the offer.
I arrived in Venice way after sunset, and while the first glimpse of the city was certainly suggestive, let me tell you right away one simple truth about Venice. While many cities in the world are indeed more fascinating at night, and while there are some places even here that are totally worth a look after dark (like the palaces along the Canal Grande, or St. Mark's Square), Venice is much better appreciated in daylight. Not only there isn't much to do at night unless you know the right people (I don't), but only during the daily hours you can really appreciate not only the colors and the atmosphere, but the activity. This city was once the linchpin of international commerce, a doorway between Europe, Africa and Asia, and big parts of it are still as busy as they must have been back then. Unless you're a literal Casanova, a politician or an intelligence agent, the night here is when the bustle and hustle of the city rests after a long day.
I have to say that my first impression was tainted by disappointment. We had dinner in a hotel near St Mark's, but the way I found that famous plaza and its church was by following the windows of the many big-name shops crammed in the streets of the sestiere of San Marco. Save for the width of the streets, it's exactly like being on the Passeig De Gracia in Barcelona, or every other big commercial street in any other famous city on the planet. Some old palaces that once belonged to who knows what noble family are now occupied by shops of big brands, the only ones that can afford to rent and maintain such places in the area. It's luxury, yes, but of a garishness that doesn't match at all with the mental image one tends to form of Venice. It's perfectly obvious to find Prada here, and to see a €8,000 jacket on display in a bright window at night; but it's disappointing, nonetheless. You don't have to come here to find that stuff.
Just a few meters from such shops, then, in this area you will find some of the famous corti of Venice, and be equally disappointed. These often little courtyards hidden between the incredibly crammed buildings have been much romanticised in fiction as places of secret love meetings; near St. Mark's, though, these are mostly dirty backyards where the trash from the restaurants and the commercial activities accumulates during the day.
The day after though, in the November daylight, I could finally have a walk alone around the city and really experience it. And it's worth it, without a doubt. I'll admit I am quite jaded, and it takes something really monumental to leave me wide-eyed. The last time I was utterly overwhelmed by some piece of architecture was in the Sagrada Familia, where I couldn't fight back the tears. Venice doesn't have much of the sort, to be honest. Even the incredibly famous basilica of St. Mark, with all its beautiful mosaics and its vaguely Arabic shapes, on the outside commands nowhere near as much attention as something like the Duomo in Milan, let alone St. Peter's in Rome. You have to remember that when you live in Italy, you're surrounded by history at all times. Save for a bunch of places in the country, everywhere from the smallest country hamlet to the biggest city it's perfectly common to stumble upon a building or some relic at least some parts of which can date back to any time between the 12th and the 19th century, and even earlier in some places. It's particularly surprising how unassuming the many churches of Venice are on average, compared to the much more striking churches scattered everywhere in Tuscany, in Puglia and in many more regions of Italy. Even more surprising is how bright they can be on the inside, compared to the much darker churches I am used to see, shadowy and cold even in full daylight. It's just one of the details that makes you realize how much of its own thing Venice must always have been compared to the rest of the world.
It's impossible to understand how much cars influence daily life until you come to a place where they're not allowed. You can come to Venice by car, but then you'll have to leave your car at the entrance of the city. It's incredibly odd to see "bus stations" where people wait for motorboats, even when you know it makes perfect sense. "Taxis" here are small covered motorboats that you can barely sit in if you're taller than 6 feet. You're constantly crossing water, or traveling on it. There's only four or five big bridges spanning the Canal Grande to connect the two main halves of the city, which makes moving on foot quite a puzzle even if you know where you're going. The view from the big bridges is invariably enchanting, especially of course from the incredible Bridge of Rialto. The complete absence of skyscrapers makes the view - and the atmosphere - even better.
After roaming the city for a few hours, through the maze of bridges and plazas and courtyards and famous buildings strewn around with no apparent rhyme or reason, connected by alleys sometimes barely three feet wide and often ending on water's edge, I noticed two things.
First, Italian isn't the prevalent language around here, at all. It's not only that there's tens of thousands of tourists around. There's also a lot of non-Italian workforce, and even a lot of non-Italian residents. Walking along the streets of Venice I heard a bunch of different languages in the span of a few meters; and then, I thought, this is probably how it always was in this city. With so many sea and land travellers from all parts of the known world, Venice was always a melting pot of cultures, and it still is to this day. It's in the areas less populated by tourists that you'll hear more people speaking Italian; but even there it's a very local variety, with a lot of dialect in it and its very peculiar accent. These are the areas you'll want to walk through when you've had your fill of San Marco and Rialto; this is the Venice you imagine when you've never been here. It's quieter, more colorful, more watery, and it really makes your mind wander through time and space, about how different life was in the old days and still can be beyond the limits of your everyday life.
And then I noticed how dilapidated a good part of the city looks, and wondered how much of it is a deliberate façade. The ruined plaster revealing the old, naked masonry lying under it, which would be a sign of neglect everywhere else, here must be, at least to some extent, part of the city's intended appearance. Venice is history: this is why Prada and the like look so offensively tawdry amidst the old buildings. You don't come here to see old buildings reflecting the sunlight off their fresh coat of paint: you come here to see a city that looks old, that must look old - that desperately needs to stay old forever, because nobody would come here to see it look new. Whereas in the rest of Italy the old and even the ancient has been mostly incorporated among the new, and apartments from the 1970s and the most modern glass buildings can face a row of palazzi built 100 or 200 years earlier on the other side of the street, in Venice there's very few modern buildings to be found, and it's mainly hotels (I was staying in one such hotel). Everything else will have to stay as it is, to instil in the visitor the impression of being in a place stuck in some temporal limbo between the 1200s and the 1700s, until the day it finally crumbles into the sea.
Being an incurable bibliophile, of course I just had to buy a book here. On a street corner a hundred yards behind St. Mark's I stumbled upon a very cozy little bookshop called Studium, selling mainly books about the city (but you can find some English, French and Spanish fiction there too, and the inevitable Harry Potter books). I browsed some of the books on display, wanting to buy something about the history of Venice; in the end, though, my attention was caught by a little pocket-size book by Iosif Aleksandrovič Brodskij, titled Fondamenta degli Incurabili (original English title: Watermark). It's a book about the author's experiences in Venice, which he rarely calls by name, almost invariably referring to it as "this city". Barely a hundred pages long, it was my choice in a plethora of other very interesting souvenirs of Venice. This being the city of Aldo Manuzio, the legendary printer who literally invented the pocket-size book in the early days of print, I think the choice was particularly appropriate.
Time to wrap up this post very few of you will read in full.
TLDR: go to Venice if you have the chance, and venture outside the most beaten tourist paths. See it during the day, unless you know people who know where to go at night. Drinking may be cheaper than elsewhere; eating, most likely, won't be. True Italians still mostly speak terrible English, but you'll have no trouble finding someone who speaks it well among the thousands of tourists. And no, the city doesn't stink. The average riverside town in Liguria stinks ten times as much, and it's possibly just as expensive. For a foreigner, the choice is easy.
I arrived in Venice way after sunset, and while the first glimpse of the city was certainly suggestive, let me tell you right away one simple truth about Venice. While many cities in the world are indeed more fascinating at night, and while there are some places even here that are totally worth a look after dark (like the palaces along the Canal Grande, or St. Mark's Square), Venice is much better appreciated in daylight. Not only there isn't much to do at night unless you know the right people (I don't), but only during the daily hours you can really appreciate not only the colors and the atmosphere, but the activity. This city was once the linchpin of international commerce, a doorway between Europe, Africa and Asia, and big parts of it are still as busy as they must have been back then. Unless you're a literal Casanova, a politician or an intelligence agent, the night here is when the bustle and hustle of the city rests after a long day.
I have to say that my first impression was tainted by disappointment. We had dinner in a hotel near St Mark's, but the way I found that famous plaza and its church was by following the windows of the many big-name shops crammed in the streets of the sestiere of San Marco. Save for the width of the streets, it's exactly like being on the Passeig De Gracia in Barcelona, or every other big commercial street in any other famous city on the planet. Some old palaces that once belonged to who knows what noble family are now occupied by shops of big brands, the only ones that can afford to rent and maintain such places in the area. It's luxury, yes, but of a garishness that doesn't match at all with the mental image one tends to form of Venice. It's perfectly obvious to find Prada here, and to see a €8,000 jacket on display in a bright window at night; but it's disappointing, nonetheless. You don't have to come here to find that stuff.
Just a few meters from such shops, then, in this area you will find some of the famous corti of Venice, and be equally disappointed. These often little courtyards hidden between the incredibly crammed buildings have been much romanticised in fiction as places of secret love meetings; near St. Mark's, though, these are mostly dirty backyards where the trash from the restaurants and the commercial activities accumulates during the day.
The day after though, in the November daylight, I could finally have a walk alone around the city and really experience it. And it's worth it, without a doubt. I'll admit I am quite jaded, and it takes something really monumental to leave me wide-eyed. The last time I was utterly overwhelmed by some piece of architecture was in the Sagrada Familia, where I couldn't fight back the tears. Venice doesn't have much of the sort, to be honest. Even the incredibly famous basilica of St. Mark, with all its beautiful mosaics and its vaguely Arabic shapes, on the outside commands nowhere near as much attention as something like the Duomo in Milan, let alone St. Peter's in Rome. You have to remember that when you live in Italy, you're surrounded by history at all times. Save for a bunch of places in the country, everywhere from the smallest country hamlet to the biggest city it's perfectly common to stumble upon a building or some relic at least some parts of which can date back to any time between the 12th and the 19th century, and even earlier in some places. It's particularly surprising how unassuming the many churches of Venice are on average, compared to the much more striking churches scattered everywhere in Tuscany, in Puglia and in many more regions of Italy. Even more surprising is how bright they can be on the inside, compared to the much darker churches I am used to see, shadowy and cold even in full daylight. It's just one of the details that makes you realize how much of its own thing Venice must always have been compared to the rest of the world.
It's impossible to understand how much cars influence daily life until you come to a place where they're not allowed. You can come to Venice by car, but then you'll have to leave your car at the entrance of the city. It's incredibly odd to see "bus stations" where people wait for motorboats, even when you know it makes perfect sense. "Taxis" here are small covered motorboats that you can barely sit in if you're taller than 6 feet. You're constantly crossing water, or traveling on it. There's only four or five big bridges spanning the Canal Grande to connect the two main halves of the city, which makes moving on foot quite a puzzle even if you know where you're going. The view from the big bridges is invariably enchanting, especially of course from the incredible Bridge of Rialto. The complete absence of skyscrapers makes the view - and the atmosphere - even better.
After roaming the city for a few hours, through the maze of bridges and plazas and courtyards and famous buildings strewn around with no apparent rhyme or reason, connected by alleys sometimes barely three feet wide and often ending on water's edge, I noticed two things.
First, Italian isn't the prevalent language around here, at all. It's not only that there's tens of thousands of tourists around. There's also a lot of non-Italian workforce, and even a lot of non-Italian residents. Walking along the streets of Venice I heard a bunch of different languages in the span of a few meters; and then, I thought, this is probably how it always was in this city. With so many sea and land travellers from all parts of the known world, Venice was always a melting pot of cultures, and it still is to this day. It's in the areas less populated by tourists that you'll hear more people speaking Italian; but even there it's a very local variety, with a lot of dialect in it and its very peculiar accent. These are the areas you'll want to walk through when you've had your fill of San Marco and Rialto; this is the Venice you imagine when you've never been here. It's quieter, more colorful, more watery, and it really makes your mind wander through time and space, about how different life was in the old days and still can be beyond the limits of your everyday life.
And then I noticed how dilapidated a good part of the city looks, and wondered how much of it is a deliberate façade. The ruined plaster revealing the old, naked masonry lying under it, which would be a sign of neglect everywhere else, here must be, at least to some extent, part of the city's intended appearance. Venice is history: this is why Prada and the like look so offensively tawdry amidst the old buildings. You don't come here to see old buildings reflecting the sunlight off their fresh coat of paint: you come here to see a city that looks old, that must look old - that desperately needs to stay old forever, because nobody would come here to see it look new. Whereas in the rest of Italy the old and even the ancient has been mostly incorporated among the new, and apartments from the 1970s and the most modern glass buildings can face a row of palazzi built 100 or 200 years earlier on the other side of the street, in Venice there's very few modern buildings to be found, and it's mainly hotels (I was staying in one such hotel). Everything else will have to stay as it is, to instil in the visitor the impression of being in a place stuck in some temporal limbo between the 1200s and the 1700s, until the day it finally crumbles into the sea.
Being an incurable bibliophile, of course I just had to buy a book here. On a street corner a hundred yards behind St. Mark's I stumbled upon a very cozy little bookshop called Studium, selling mainly books about the city (but you can find some English, French and Spanish fiction there too, and the inevitable Harry Potter books). I browsed some of the books on display, wanting to buy something about the history of Venice; in the end, though, my attention was caught by a little pocket-size book by Iosif Aleksandrovič Brodskij, titled Fondamenta degli Incurabili (original English title: Watermark). It's a book about the author's experiences in Venice, which he rarely calls by name, almost invariably referring to it as "this city". Barely a hundred pages long, it was my choice in a plethora of other very interesting souvenirs of Venice. This being the city of Aldo Manuzio, the legendary printer who literally invented the pocket-size book in the early days of print, I think the choice was particularly appropriate.
Time to wrap up this post very few of you will read in full.
TLDR: go to Venice if you have the chance, and venture outside the most beaten tourist paths. See it during the day, unless you know people who know where to go at night. Drinking may be cheaper than elsewhere; eating, most likely, won't be. True Italians still mostly speak terrible English, but you'll have no trouble finding someone who speaks it well among the thousands of tourists. And no, the city doesn't stink. The average riverside town in Liguria stinks ten times as much, and it's possibly just as expensive. For a foreigner, the choice is easy.
