Walk like a Venetian

There are real marble columns in the bedroom. The two walk-in wardrobes boast three clothes hangers between them, and in the bathroom a sign in Italian and dialect warns against using the toilet if the electricity fails. Welcome to Venice.
(Photos by Miki Yamanouchi. Click for larger images.)

Venice is an excellent place to confront your doubts about being a tourist. No matter what you have heard or read beforehand, a visit always has something to teach. I learned it's not true that Venice looks like Disneyland. Quite the reverse, in fact: Disneyland looks like Venice. The city on the lagoon is the original.

This is a notorious treasury of architecture. All phoney. Everywhere you look: fake Greek, fake Roman, everything copied, adapted or reborn from something else. But, as Tarantino said, you can borrow anything if you make it your own. The reference to Tarantino is perfectly apt; Venetian architects poured it on.

Not that their merchant patrons objected. Venice was about wealth and power, and its rulers weren't passionate about art, they were passionate about art treasures. Like the rich have always done, they started buying art and architecture when they ran out of other things to buy. There's only so much you can eat and drink in a lifetime. If you want serious street — or canal — credibility, have a hole dug in the ground and start pouring in money.

Better yet, do it in the middle of a lagoon. In the Quattrocento, this built Venice; and as their art collection grew, the Venetians attacked and sacked their ancient protector, Constantinople, to help fill it out.

That is where the famous lions in the piazza S. Marco came from. And the city's prized relics of St Mark were stolen from Alexandria and smuggled out wrapped in pork to deter Muslim customs officers. (The former gospeller is now thought to be the patron saint of the tourist, hence a ‘mark’.) Stolen goods as city emblems define a certain style.

All that during Venice's expansion. The money pit is now the rescue commedia. Having run through their own money some centuries back, Venetians now exercise this talent with other people's. Astronomical sums are recruited to the cause of keeping Venice slightly above sea level. From time to time a daring and ingenious engineering plan is approved and trumpeted by the Italian government. There is a flurry of contract letting, a few years of ponderous silence, then another plan is announced. This is showmanship of a high order.

In the meantime Venetians get rarer. They leave, not simply to escape rising waters, but also numbing taxation, and civic services crippled by corruption. Awaiting them on the mainland are gardens, cars and supermarkets. You can spot Venetians among the swarming tourists: they carry shopping bags: no weekly shopping trip in the Fiat for them. As Venetians walk instead of driving, they walk as other Italians drive; so don't dawdle in their way. And as they are crowded together in a city blessedly free of traffic noise, and rich in noise-reflecting surfaces, they talk more quietly than other Italians do. You can also see the threat of acqua alta in every ground-floor room: nothing valuable rests on the floor.

The first Venetians fled the mainland fifteen centuries ago to escape barbarian hordes ravaging the remains of empire. A hundred years ago, on learning how few Assyrians were left after the recent massacres in the Near East, William Saroyan wrote the short story "Seventy Thousand Assyrians". By a meaningless coincidence, that's how many Venetians are left in the city now. It's a massacre.

Each year, millions of visitors arrive to wonder at the remains of empire. Ravaging is done differently these days. In the piazza S. Marco, guides hold flags aloft, like Roman standard bearers followed by columns of tourists armed with Handycams. Open mouths attest to it: something is being consumed here.

With legions of us descending on only seventy thousand of them, Venetians don't see it as primarily their problem that the city is sinking into the Adriatic. The world has their city as a favoured playground, so it's only right that money to fix it should also descend.

Venetians might do best simply to sell the town outright. Perhaps that's their plan, and they're craftily holding out for a deal for the whole place. As the city empties, eventually that offer must come, probably from a consortium led by Disney and the Guggenheim Foundation. Until then, expect the locals to keep taking the rescue money.

While Venetians remain, there are pleasures to be shared with them. Right by the lagoon on the piazza S. Marco, hidden from the invading hordes by a café orchestra pouring out sugared film music, is the Bibilioteca Marciana. The library is not open to visitors, but I blagged my way to a ticket to its reading room. Europe's first press was set up in Germany, but the Aldine Press, founded here in 1495 by Aldus Manutius, designed and used type in ways that still inspire book and type designers. Geek heaven. Travel, you; and find your own beauties.

The city has humbler pleasures too, especially if you enjoy walking, and streets where people stop and talk. You do not have to get far from the tourist honeypots to find working neighbourhoods and modest prices. Venice is famously safe, and unaccompanied children play in the streets. Tourism has long been the city's main business, and most Venetians can manage some English, but away from the trails, conversations in broken English and toilet-and-restaurant Italian require attention. Is it just my fantasy that Italians are more willing than the English to be surprised by strangers?

On the second morning of our visit, we and our local cafe owner discovered a shared enthusiasm for a French band. She had heard them recently in Treviso, we in London. At an outside table we breakfasted on her coffee and pastries while blended Argentinian tango and Jamaican dub floated along the narrow street to where a small child danced solo. When I went inside to pay, I carried in the empty cups, at which her husband protested. Our new friend waved him to silence: "They're regulars."

The world can still be strange and beautiful, the future a secret.

NOTES

Panini and prosecco at Da Lele, campo dei Tolentini, Santa Croce 1503
Cappuccino and pastries from the small café opposite the bakery on salizada Sant'Antonin, Castello
Budget accommodation at Casa Linger, Castello 3541, salizada Sant'Antonin, +39 (041) 528 5920
Budget flights between Stansted and Treviso from Ryanair
Pictures by Miki Yamanouchi at www.mikiy.com

Posted by SJT at May 23, 2004 03:11 PM