Day 5 Venice: August 11

Venice is a small city geographically. It also has a small population, with fewer than 50,000 residents. What it lacks for in residents, it makes up for with tourists.  On peak tourism days, up to 120,000 tourists arrive in the city. Most of these tourists are day trippers who pop in for a few hours and leave. These means that Venice feels quite empty in the morning, late afternoon and evening, living up to its nickname "La Serenissima," the most serene.

 

Brandan and I went for a walk Monday morning before breakfast. We found every street and canal enchanting. This is the view from the Accademia Bridge.

 

This is the Rialto Bridge, the oldest bridge across the Grand Canal.

Venice leans into its winged lion symbol. We found examples everywhere we went.

The following photos are just a few from our walk around town.

We actually did not take a photo of every lion we saw, although it might feel like we did.

Since we knew almost nothing of the history of Venice, we signed up for a tour. Our guide, Elena, is wearing sunglasses in the middle of the photo. She had a great sense of humor while still clearly loving Venice. Our tour included the Doge's Palace and the Basilica of San Marco.

We learned Venice was founded by refugees during the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. The land was originally an undesirable salt marsh, so it was a good place to escape the barbarians attacking from the north. Over hundreds of years, the settlers built the man-made islands that are now Venice. They formed a republic that lasted for over 1000 years until they were conquered by Napoleon in 1797. Their democratic form of government (markets like stability) combined with their position on international trade routes (easy access to goods) led Venice to become ridiculously rich and powerful.

This is the courtyard inside of the Doge's Palace. Doge is the Venetian word for duke and the Doges were the figureheads for Venetian government. The city was actually ruled by different councils with names like the Great Council, the Council of 40, the Council of 10, and so on. The Doge didn't have any real authority. He was required to live in a few rooms in the palace. The rest of the space in the palace was administrative space for the government. The Doge was very limited in his personal business to prevent corruption. All of his mail was read by one of the councils to prevent intrigues or improper influence. You might wonder why anyone would ever want to be the Doge. Elena explained it was the law: if you were elected you had to serve. A few men tried running away after being elected Doge, but the Venetians found them and dragged them back to make them serve out their terms in office.

There is an antique gondola in the courtyard of the palace. Venice invented gondolas and the shallow, flat-bottomed boats are ideal for navigating the canals. Wealthy families owned increasingly elaborate and colorful gondolas until one of the Doges proclaimed that black was the most elegant color and Venice passed a law that all gondolas must be black. Originally gondolas were steered by 2 gondoliers, but families decided it was too expensive to pay 2 people and cut back to 1 gondolier per boat. The S shaped piece of decoration at the front of the gondola is called the "fero" and it is very symbolic. It's shape is the S curve of the Grand Canal, the big part on the top is represents the Doge's hat, the 6 metal strips facing away from the boat represent the 6 "sestieri," or districts, of Venice and the metal strip in the opposite direction represents the Giudecco, the souther most island in Venice that faces the other 6 districts.

This is the main entrance to the palace. Everything grand about the palace is meant to flaunt the richness of the city and intimidate visitors who want to do business. None of the elaborate decorations are meant to honor or flatter the Doges, unlike some of the art we saw in Rome which was created to please emperors or popes.

St. Mark's lion is over the door. This is probably a good place to explain the meaning of St. Mark's lion. We don't quite understand why, but religious relics are really, really important to the Catholic church. Relics are ranked in order of importance. The best relics are things related to Christ's Passion (for example pieces of the cross) and the bones, blood, or hair of saints. The more important the saint is, the better relic the body parts make. The second rank of relics are things that saints used (like St. Peter's chains). Finally, the third rank of relics are things that touched a rank one or two relic. Although in more recent times the Catholic church has changed its position, historically you could not build a church unless you had a relic to go inside the church. Originally, the patron saint of Venice was St. Theodore, a Greek soldier who was martyred. However, as Venice's power and influence grew, they wanted to upgrade to a more powerful saint.

Someone remembered (or invented?) a legend that St. Mark the Apostle had visited Venice during his lifetime and had a vision. In the vision, an angel in the form of a winged lion appeared with a book that had written in it, "Pax tibi Marce Evangelista meus, hic requiescet corpus tuum," which means "Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist, here your body will rest." For awhile, this vision (nicely documented and attested as fact) was good enough to build the Basilica di San Marco. However, everyone knew St. Mark was buried in Alexandria, Egypt. In 828 AD, two Venetian merchants traveled to Alexandria, stole St. Mark's body, and smuggled it out of the country in a basket of pork. St. Theodore is still a patron saint of Venice and his body is also in the church, but St. Mark gets all the love.

The Doges Palace burned in the 16th century, right at the zenith of Italian painters working in Venice. The city used the combined talents of the greatest artists of the time to redecorate the public rooms, including Tintoretto, Veronese, Titian, and Carpaccio. The rooms are filled with masterpieces.

The Grand Council room is dominated by a giant painting titled "Il Paridiso," meaning Paradise. The Council felt looking at images of righteous people receiving their reward in heaven would help them make better decisions. The various painters involved in the redecoration project competed for the prestige of completing a painting for this prominent location. Tintoretto sealed the deal by offering to paint the scene for free, an offer the Venetian businessmen couldn't refuse. When it took Tintoretto a year to finish the center of the painting with Mary and Jesus, he realized the task could end up bankrupting him. He solved his financial woes by assigning the rest of the painting to his students. In turn, the students made money by selling rights for the faces in paradise to various members of the council. So the council members could look up at the painting and see themselves, their friends and family members enjoying paradise.

By the end of the 16th century, there were over 2,000 members of the Grand Council and they were required to meet once a week. To keep the room from becoming stuffy and unbearable, there are vents in the ceiling to allow fresh air to circulate.

Two of the other rooms share a clock. This is one side of the wall.

And this is the clock on the other side. Interestingly, the clocks do not have any mechanism to keep time. The councils relied on a servant running outside to check the time on St. Mark's Clock Tower, then returning to the room and setting the clock to the correct time. The servant could set the time for both clocks in whichever room was unoccupied and let the people inside the meetings know the time without interrupting.

Part of Venice's system of governance relied on neighbors reporting on each other. Boxes like this one were set up around the city and anyone could put a denunciation through the slit in the front.

This council room had a door through which government officials could retrieve the denunciations. Ordinary complaints were required to be signed and list two or more witnesses. However, the council would investigate threats against the government even if they were anonymous, using a networks of spies.

The Doge's Palace served all the functions of government that we would recognize today, including executive. legislative, and judicial. This little bridge connects the Doge's Palace on the left with the prison on the right. Those found guilty in court could be moved to the prison without going outdoors.

This is a photo of the bridge from the inside.

The bridge is called The Bridge of Sighs because this was the last view prisoners had outside the prison until their prison sentence was complete.

The cells were miserable and very secure. Casanova is the only prisoner who ever escaped, and that is only because he charmed the jailer. When prisoners finished their sentences, they were given a bill for their rent and food during their stay. If they couldn't pay, they had to stay in jail, and continued to accumulate debt for their food and rent. This meant many prisoners died in prison, unable to pay their debts.

Generally, Doges were forbidden from having statues of themselves made. Venice made a couple of exceptions for very well liked Doges. However, even those Doges were required to be kneeling, showing humility before the symbol of Venice.

After our very interesting tour of the Doges Palace, we entered the Basilica di San Marco. It follows the maximalist motto that more is more. Venice has had a hostile relationship with Rome for its entire existence and the hostility extends to the influence of the pope. When designing its church, Venice looked towards Constantinople and the Eastern Orthodox church, rather than the Western Catholic church. Today it is under the direction of the pope, but for a long time, the church was independent. There is not a lot of coherence in the decorations. Pretty much if they had something gorgeous and expensive, they found a way to work it in to the church.

The ceiling is covered in over an acre of mosaics. Many of the tesserae are made of gold leaf sandwiched between glass which makes the mosaics glow and sparkle in the sunlight coming in through a few windows.

The floors are covered with dizzying mosaics.

At first the ceiling mosaics seemed random. The longer we looked, the more we made sense of them. They actually read like graphic novels. Typically the story starts in the center of the dome and spirals around to the end. This section tells the story of the Creation.

Angels like this one reminded us of the 6 winged seraphim described in Isaiah 6:2.

This very graphic panel shows Pharaoh's dream where the 7 skinny cows eat the 7 fat cows.

At the time of the 4th crusade in the 1200s, Venice persuaded the Crusaders that it was a better idea to sack Constantinople instead of Jerusalem. The Crusaders agreed and came home with many treasures, some of which got tacked on to the church, like this porphyry sculpture. Our guide, Elena, called this looting, "bringing home souvenirs."

These panels all came from churches in Constantinople. The 12 sheep in the center panel represent the 12 apostles.

Here is a fine mosaic and other detailed sculptures. It turns out that Muslim armies attacked Constantinople 200 years after the Crusaders and destroyed all religious artwork. So maybe Venice preserved treasures that would otherwise would not survive. Or maybe that is a slim excuse for the Crusaders vandalism.

This cute little lion, one of a pair, looks like he is old enough to come from Constantinople, but really he  is only 300 years old, a baby really.

We shared a Margherita pizza for lunch.

And stopped by a grocery store for dinner. We were delighted to see a huge selection of pasta, the same brand we buy in the US.

The next three lions were all in the same plazas. This big lion seemed to be staring at this. . .

. . .lioness! This is the only lioness we saw in the city.

A third lion seemed to be on the side of the interaction of the first two lions. There could be a story here.

Becky had read about a bookshop called Liberia Acqua Alta and wanted to stop by. The bookstore definitely understands branding.

We're not willing to say it's the most beautiful bookstore in the world, but it had a great selection of postcards.

And a shelf of Harry Potter in Italian.

And a resident cat.

And a gondola in the middle of the shop.

So we would rate it as an above average bookstore.

We stopped for some gelato.

We shared a cone with one scoop of mango gelato and one scoop of lemon. The mango was good, but the lemon was unbelievable.

We booked a gondola ride for Monday evening. A person can't just hop in a boat and call themselves a gondolier. Venice only licenses 425 gondolieri and each must pass rigorous tests, attend an "arte del gondiliere" school, and complete 400 hours of training. The pay off is pretty good. The average gondolier earns $150,000 a year.

The gondoliers buy and maintain their own gondolas. Each of the gondolas are handmade and with good care will last 20-25 years.

But that's enough facts and history. We were along for the ride and the experience. 

The ride we booked promised we would be serenaded. We didn't realize this meant an actual singer (Enrico) and guitar player (Massimo) on our gondola. The music made the ride extra special.

We started and ended in the Grand Canal, making a loop through smaller canals.

Modern gondolas have the same fero on the bow as the old gondolas did.

This is a photo of some bricks of a building at the waterline.

Lots of other gondolas were out at the same time. Enrico's rich voice sounded even better as it reverberated off the walls of the narrow canals.

Here we are back at the beginning of our loop, looking across the Grand Canal.

Our hotel was closer to the east side of Venice so we decided to walk to the west side to catch the sunset. The sunset was a bit hazy, but on our way to the edge of the city, we passed a notice for a concert to be held in a church that evening that looked promising. We decided to check it out on our way back to the hotel.

When we got back to the church, a large group of young men dressed in long black robes had gathered at the church. We're used to the way young men missionaries from our church look with white shirts and ties, and we also understand they look unusual to some people. A similar looking American young man in a long, black robe (Is it a priest? Is it a monk?) definitely stands out. We talked to a few of the men and learned they were students at a Catholic seminary in Virginia who were enjoying a month traveling in Italy. We all decided to attend the concert.

The location for the concert was the church of San Vidal, which is now decommissioned as a church and is the performance space for a chamber music group called Interpreti Veneziani who highlight music from Venetian composers. The night we attended the group featured 4 violins, a viola, a cello, a bass and a harpsichord. They played 3 violin concertos by Vivaldi and a piece by Respighi. The concert was sublime.

The stage was flanked by two statues of women, one representing faith and the other fortitude. The statue of faith looked like she was wearing a veil. During the intermission, Brandan moved closer to see what the veil was made of. It actually was made of stone and the skillful sculptor just made it look like a translucent piece of fabric. Incredible.

The entire concert was transcendent. We couldn't believe we were listening to some of Vivaldi's best loved music, played in his hometown by skilled musicians in a beautiful space. The entire building resonated with the music and it felt like the vibrations entered us as well. We felt super thankful to have stumbled across the concert.