🧾🖼️THE CITY

“They might chirp and chaffer, come and go
For pleasure or profit, her men alive—
My business is hardly with them, I trow,
But with the empty cells of the human hive;
With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,
The church’s apsis, aisle or nave,
Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch,
Its face set full for the sun to shave.”

— Robert Browning

Arrival — The Piazza

The traveller who wishes to attune himself to the peculiar charm of Venice will do best to arrive after sunset, when evening has already veiled the somewhat unlovely railway approach to the city.

Venice, the great state of the lagoon, always turned her face toward the sea. She adorned herself to welcome her guests as they were rowed from Fusina or sailed in from the Adriatic, landing at the Molo, by the Piazzetta. To enter Venice by train is like entering a stately mansion through its stables.

Yet, once the traveller steps into his gondola — that “black Triton” of the lagoons — and glides through the waterways toward the strangers’ quarter, flanked by lines of houses and palaces whose worn or neglected walls are softened by dim lamps, he will soon fall under the spell Venice casts over all who approach her.

Two Venices: Water and Stone

There are, in truth, two Venices:

• the Venice of the canals, and
• the Venice of the streets.

To understand the city fully, one must walk. Only on foot can the traveller do justice to the varied beauty of its streets: the quaint fragments of ancient architecture, flashes of brilliant colour, humble shrines, and the countless small details that make Venice’s byways a continual source of surprise and delight.

The difficulty of finding one’s way has been greatly exaggerated. Anyone with a map and a modest sense of direction can, with a little patience, reach any destination. Churches are usually found on or near a campo; streams of people flow naturally between the campi; well-worn paths reveal the most frequented routes.

If a canal or blind alley blocks the way, a brief detour will almost always lead to one of the 380 bridges by which, as Evelyn so picturesquely wrote, the city is “tacked together.” And even if one becomes hopelessly lost, a single soldino given to a boy will quickly set matters right.

Understanding the City’s Language

Venice speaks its own architectural language:

• Canali — broad waterways
• Rii — narrow canals (far more numerous)
• Fondamenta — paths alongside canals
• Calle — streets lined with houses
• Ruga / Rughetta — once scattered streets, later continuous
• Salizzada — early paved streets, often near churches
• Rio terra — filled-in and paved canals
• Piscina — former fish-ponds treated the same way
• Ponte — bridge
• Campo — open paved square, once a field
• Campiello — a small campo
• Corte — courtyard
• Vico cieco / Vicolo cieco — blind alleys, best avoided

The city is divided into six sestieri, subdivided into parishes, and houses are numbered by sestiere, often reaching into the thousands.

The Merceria, crowded and lively, leads from beneath the Clock Tower in St Mark’s Square, winding toward the Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal. Two other bridges span the canal at roughly equal distances, while ferries (traghetti) and small steamers (vaporetti) make access easy along its entire length.

Thus, the gondola should be regarded as a luxury, not a necessity — much like a carriage in any other city.

The Piazza of San Marco

The Piazza of San Marco offers a scene of unparalleled interest.

• To the east, the most astonishing group of Byzantine and Gothic architecture in Europe.
• To the north, the rhythmic symmetry of Pietro Lombardo’s Procuratie Vecchie, crowned by the Clock Tower.
• To the south, the Procuratie Nuove, Scamozzi’s heavy elaboration of Sansovino’s graceful design for the Libreria Vecchia.
• To the west, a more prosaic Napoleonic structure.

For a thousand years, opposite the Porta della Carta of the Ducal Palace, stood the old Campanile — a giant sentinel watching over the lagoon. On July 14th, 1902, to the astonishment of all Venice, the mighty tower gently collapsed, crushing Sansovino’s Loggetta and part of the Libreria, yet miraculously sparing all human life.

When the Venetians learned that St Mark’s and the Ducal Palace were untouched, they said simply:

È stato galant’uomo San Marco
St Mark has been a good fellow.

A new Campanile now stands in its place, faithful in form but unable to restore the vanished tower with all its history and romance.

The Living Heart of Venice

Once, the Piazza was a brilliant theatre of colour and life. Gold, vermilion and blue adorned façades, arches and sculptures. The Porta della Carta glowed so brightly it was known as the Porta Dorata. Bronze horses, lions, and saints were gilded; tall masts bore banners proclaiming dominion over distant lands.

Merchants and strangers from every corner of the world passed through the square. So many languages were spoken that an old writer called it not the market of a city, but the market of the world — forum orbis, non urbis.

Commerce has long since departed, but animation remains. On holidays, when the band plays, the Piazza comes alive. Sitting outside Florian’s Café, one may watch gondoliers with their superb gait, women of the people with their graceful carriage, fashionable youths in borrowed English style, and visitors from every land.

In summer evenings, when northern Italian families arrive for the season, the Piazza becomes a vast open-air salon, alive far into the night.

As the sun sets, the air — exquisitely clear — shifts through shades of pale blue, amethyst, pink, turquoise, indigo. And here, as so often in Venice, the night is lovelier than the day.