Venice

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When I said that the Gothic was the great export of Venice, probably more unique to the Veneto and Venice and equally pervasive globally, is Palladian classicism. Andrea Palladio was actually called something quite different, but was adopted by a grandee of Mantua, who called him Palladio after Pallas Athena because he was such an amazing god of drawing. He was a stone mason, as was his father, and had these extraordinary ideas. The book, first published in 1960, was originally titled 'The World of Venice', and the richness of its description makes Venice feel like an enclosed world, intoxicating, enthralling and claustrophobic and crowded: ( "the little subsidiary passages that creep padded and muffled among the houses, like the runs of city weasels.") This Venice as a place different and apart from the rest of the world, even from its own hinterland, the idea of it as a place of intrigue and carnival, which is a holiday from normal life more so than most cultural city destinations. (Although the recent level of prominence of the carnival and its masks for tourism are apparently a fairly recent innovation). A mesh of nets patterns the walls of a fisherman's islet, and a restless covey of boats nuzzles its water-gate." (Landfall)

VISIT VENICE | VeneziaUnica City Pass VISIT VENICE | VeneziaUnica City Pass

I fell in love with La Serenissima and have read everything I could get my hands on, fiction and non-fiction. This is one of the best non-fiction titles I have read. From the history to the story of uninhabited islets, the book covers every aspect of this great city. Reading this book gives an idea of what it means to live in Venice. The absolute other end of paintings to go and see would be the Carpaccios in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, which is behind San Marco. They’re almost genre pictures because they are pictures of Venice as it was in 1500. There is this extraordinary, overriding oddity about Venice, which is that because it’s so unchanged whether it’s in Carpaccio or Bellini, Guardi or Canaletto, you’re looking at paintings with a costumed cast that could be you. That’s such an exciting thing. Obviously, things change a bit: the gondolas used to have covers, now they don’t. But, in general, many views, whether medieval or later, are recognizably unchanged. This was my favorite neighborhood. Cross the Accademia bridge and just stroll among very clean streets full of art galleries, shops and restaurants. The earliest of all state banks, the Banca Giro, was opened on the Rialto in the twelfth century." (The City: 19) Other Venetian waterways ... have an average width of twelve feet, and the average depth of a fair-sized family bath-tub." (The City: 12)

Venice is conservative all the way through the Renaissance. It’s very slow and resentful about change. The first Renaissance building, probably by Mauro Codussi, is San Michele on the graveyard island and is 70 to 80 years after Donato Bramante’s building in Rome. It’s even longer after Giotto and Filippo Brunelleschi are building in Florence. So Palladianism is for some people the most and for others the second most important architectural export. Venice is quite filtered, it’s quite interpretive. Probably, as much as any city one knows, it’s seen through a literary lens. That’s true of London and New York and other cities as well, but there’s a lexicon of writing about Venice, partly because in modern times—say post-1550—it’s been the most service of economies. Venice’s heyday in the Middle Ages had been eclipsed by the end of the 16th century. It's so....listy. Lists of boats, lists of lions, lists of towers, lists of burial places. The lists go on and on. The description is so exhaustive as to be exhausting. In a word: tedious. Let’s move on to The Architectural History of Venice by Deborah Howard, which seems to go right from the beginning, the founding of Venice.

Judith Mackrell Recommends the Best Venetian Reads - Waterstones Judith Mackrell Recommends the Best Venetian Reads - Waterstones

It is also very good on the still current quite big issue, which is migration out of the city. The whole world is full of people moving into cities, but when you get highly developed as Venice did you move out. That probably starts in earnest after the Second World War, but it had happened before. There was the building of Mestre, and then of Marghera, the chemical port. But just don't expect to finish it. You may well do. Or you may find, like I did, that your interest wanes after a while.

Venice’s contributions to the Renaissance are indisputable: the city gave us Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, and you can spot them all at Gallerie dell'Accademia in Dorsoduro. Look out too for The Tempest, a painting by Giorgione – no one knows what the scene on this mysterious little canvas is meant to be about – and some unmissable work by Hieronymus Bosch. Sudden coveys of youths" is rather marvellous phrasing. But much later, Chapter 21 hits a stride of particularly striking, almost too-rich descriptions:

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Many characterisations and generalisations are the of-their-time sort; there are commonplace references to housemaids and housekeepers that sound, in this voice, like a hangover from pre-war Britain; there's apparent romanticisation of Italian corruption as quaint; locals described "like figures from a Goldoni comedy". Indeed the Venetians in the book seem a little too much like a scene which Morris describes being filmed for TV: But he was a marvelous painter and an amazing thinker. His ideas were behind the Natural History Museum in Oxford being built, and the O’Shea brothers carving those extraordinary capitals. Someone would bring a plant from the botanical gardens in the morning, and these Irish masons would carve that plant into the building. A lot of those ideas about the Gothic, Ruskin cuts in Venice. He spends a lot of time drawing and measuring. He’s very careful, trying to tabulate the world. He has a lot of ideas about when arches became Byzantine, and when they became Romanesque. He is quite often quite wrong. But the idea is a powerful one, that Venice, as a Gothic city, is an act for good. Venice once ruled an empire that stretched across the eastern Mediterranean, but by the early modern period was already evolving into a city whose greatest claim to fame was as a tourist destination. Here Matthew Rice, author and illustrator of Venice: A Sketchbook Guide, recommends books to read about Venice and its history and architecture, as well as a couple of crime thrillers to read while you're there.Perhaps the best way to navigate the Grand Canal is to take the 40-minute Line 1 vaporetto ride from Piazzale Roma to San Zaccaria. The magnificent palazzos lining the canal showcase the wealth of families during the height of the Venetian Republic, from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Don’t want to splash out on a gondola ride? You can have a similar (though less private) experience and cross the canal for just a few euros on a traghetto gondola ferry. It is also dense, illogical, meandering and highly personal. If you are going to Venice you simply have to read it. You probably have to read it anyway as one of the best examples of a travel book ever written. Entertaining, ironical, witty, high spirited and appreciative . . . Both melancholy and gay and worldly, I think of it now as among the best books on Venice; indeed as the best modern book about a city that I have ever read.' Geoffrey Grigson Hidden along Venice’s side streets behind an unassuming facade, this unique bookstore is home to a treasure trove of new and used books creatively housed in gondolas and bathtubs. Climb the staircase made out of damaged books to enjoy an idyllic view, and don’t miss out on taking a photo at the fire escape, which opens out to the canal. Also, try to spot one of the many resident cats the bookstore has adopted.