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Venice Through New Glasses
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Venice Through New Glasses
Venice. A single word which conjures up many meanings. Subjectively one can refer to a romantic location or designate a large scale vitrified museum. Neither is too distant from the truth, however one certaiinty remains: it is often on a third or fourth visit that one starts to truly appreciate this city. Through exploration, casual walks, general assimilation... one starts to develop new eyes, wide open to serendipitous discoveries. This itinerary is a sort of ocular training session, following uncommon paths...
 A change of perspective requires a change in light. Veneto has humid weather and generally dull skies; palazzi and details are subdued. I ever you have a chance to be around duringwinter with the Bora blowing, jump on the vaporetto for the Lido and savour the silhouettes of Venice crowned by the Alps under crisp light... unsurpassable!
But there's always a Plan B: a nighttime ride on the vaporetto from piazzale Roma, direction Lido - express or omnibus, it's your pick. Light, perfumes, wavelets, all take on a different expression. Trying to identify the average palazzo from its daylight counterpart  is not an insignificant exercise. Welcome to Venice's New World!
Step off at the public gardens of the Biennale. Following Riva dei Sette Martiri through the gardens, going back towards St. Mark's, one cna admire the church of S. Giuseppe di Castello, the Sanmicheli arch and S. Iseppo (a good choice for a daytime visit). Crossing the bridge at the end leads to another park, possibly closed at this hour. Either pass through or go back towards the main canal and progress to a large avenue, via Garibaldi. On the corner of via Garibaldi and Riva dei Martiri there is a singular structure, a slice of pie, that was home to the Caboto (Giovanni & Sebastiano), great navigators to the New World. This avenue is special; Aside from its abnormal width, it is a genuine neighbourhood, clothlines and all. No hotels nor semi-abandoned structures.
 Our itinerary consists of going around the Arsenale, which produced in their heyday at least one ship a day, sometimes two during wartime. This actually explains one of humanity's first ecological disasters, the disappearance of forests on and around the laguna.
TOurist guides usually send you to:
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St. Mark's:
with its Cathedral, tower and museum.
Riva degli Schiavoni around:
the Doges palace, the prisons and thebridge of sighs.
The major bridges of Rialto andAccademia.
The Guggenheim museum |
Following via Garibaldi all the way down, we cross the bridgeto the San Pietro a Castello island. Aside from the old surrounding XVth century Cathedral is singular in many ways. Its belltower is clearly not vertical, its dome is almost as large as that of St. Peter's in Rome and the inside has numerous other curiosities. To the left are the silhouettes of the walls and a tower of the Arsenale.
Backtracking, we can build on our confidence and explore side streets & alleys of via Garibaldi, passing through Fondemanta della  Tana which faces on of the Arsenale's sides... Back upon the S.Marco Canal and the Naval Museum (another highly recommended daytime activity) we dive back inland along the main canal into the Arsenale, towards the Campo bearing the same name and, still following the canals, campo Gorne and its opening on the Arsenale. This is another neighbourhood which was tightly linked to the various crafts of the sea; it is replete of curiosities, not the least of which are the names of some passageways.
 Crossing the bridge after Campo do Pozzi we reach bearing left Calle dei Furlani and two interesting buildings: the church (and home to the order) of the knights of Malta (XIth century) and the school of S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, a museum without the appelation, one of the corporations representating slavic populations from the other side of the Adriatic (schiavoni was the term of the epoch).
Pursuing to the following island - don't take the first bridge, but the second one, all the way to the end of the street turn left just before the bridge and enjoy the splendid church of S. Giorgio dedicated so by the important Greek diaspora of the XVIth century. The community was so important that to this day it maintiains a Hellenic Center for Byzantine Studies within the complex. In short, another example of the reach of Venitian society and its cosmopolitain nature during its glory days.
 From here, we are but a few steps away from Riva degli Schiavoni and new itineraries fraught with discovery and surprise.
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