Venice. We arrived yesterday (Wednesday)
morning at 11:30 at the Marco Polo airport. Our Air France flight was
an hour and a half late departing and we arrived in Paris equally as
latel, missing our connecting flight (at 7:30 am Paris time) to Venice.
I had never been to Venice before. I’d see many wonderful paintings
and photographs that intrigue, that thrill, that ply the imagination.
I had read Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice and Shakespeare’s Merchant
of Venice, and seen films where Venice is the location.I have
many friends for whom Venice is their most favorite destination, for
whom it is evocative of history, of love and romance (and sex), and
heard descriptions of their rapturous memories. None of it, however,
nothing compares to the real thing.
So great, so fabulous, so wondrous is the actual experience that any
words I might use will be inadequate expressions of the inner thrill
of arriving and then even moreso, being here.
On first sight, from the air, Venice itself it is a tiny little island
packed with red rooftops, ancient towers and domes in the midst of
this vast Adriactic lagoon barely isolated from a vast encroaching
sea. From that vantage point, it is difficult to understand how such
a tiny little island could command such profoundly charismatic mystique.
The Marco Polo airport is on the mainland which is part of Metropolitan
Venice/Padua (population approximately 1.6 million -- about 215,000
are citizens of Venice proper). Access to Venice is either by causeway
or by boat. Having got our bags (which made all the connections, missed
and otherwise), we walked about a half mile of pavement to the docks
where you can take a large floating boat-bus or hire a private water
taxi. We chose the latter: 90 euros plus 4.5 euros per bag. Plus tip.
The boat way is marked by wooden pylons as wide a two lane highway.
It’s about a twenty minute trip to the island which on approach
is packed with ancient stucco buildings of pale reds, yellows, orange,
white, along with occasional marble and brick facades.
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Ca Rezzonico
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Once inside Grand Canal which is as wide as a six-lane marine highway,
one is architecturally transported back seven or eight centuries to
a place that was the center of commerce of all of Renaissance Europe.
There are many signs of modern times, namely the boats transporting
us (not to mention costumes of the present day). But one is almost
instantly swept away by the aura of the past, by the lurking shadows
of reverie, benchmarks of a thousand years of humanity, dwelling, having
dwelled in this enclave of bricks and mortar, stone and stucco, bordered
only by sea and sky.
People swoon over this place and on first sight (and almost all moments
thereafter) it is easy to understand. This week visitors are drawn
here from all over the world for the Venice Biennale, one of the great
art exhibition and fairs that is staged here every two years. A smaller
group of mainly Americans are attending the annual gathering of members
of the Venetian Heritage, the organization the raises funds to restore
historical Venetian buildings. The Venetian Heritage runs a series
of lectures, tours, dinners and luncheons for its subscribers, providing
an intimate and informed view of the city’s art and architectural
history.
There are banners hanging from some of the palazzi advertising their
shows. Ca Rezzonico, the late 17th century palazzo has an enormous
banner advertising its exhibition. There is a Canaletto painting of
the first two completed stories from the early 1700s. One of the Rezzonico
family sons became Pope Clement XIII. The palazzo was once the Venetian
home of the poet Robert Browning. Whistler and John
Singer Sargent later had studios there in the late 19th century;
and in 1927 Linda and Cole Porter rented the place
for what was then a princely sum -- $3000 a month -- for parties and
pleasure and work (Porter wrote “A Rose In Bloom” there
for comedienne Fannie Brice).
Just across the way the Palazzo Grassi houses the enormous contemporary
art collection of Francois Pinault, the French
tycoon, on the terrace of which is a gigantic skull looking bejeweled
like the now famous Damien Hirst platinum and diamond
skull, but made out of shiny tin cans.
Farther along the water lane is the Peggy Guggenheim Museum,
low, sprawling and far more commanding in presence than any pictures ever revealed
to me. Guggenheim, daughter of Benjamin (who went down on the Titanic)
and niece of Solomon (whose name dominates the museum on Fifth
Avenue and 89th Street), came to settle in Venice right after the War in 1946,
because she could afford it, and because it was accessible to her many European
connections. Here she established the home for her art collection and consequently
(because of the expanding influence of the artists in her collection) largely
influenced the emergence of this great ancient commercial center into an art
mecca for the contemporary world.Just across the canal and up the way is The
Europa (a Westin hotel) where we were booked.
You arrive dockside wherever you go and the only noise of traffic that this city
knows is the muffled sound of the motorboats, the calls of the gondoliers and
boat captains and the squeak of the hulls gently hitting against the docksides.
This heavenly lack of the noise of horns and motors is, according to one sophisticated
citizen, why visitors find it so easy to get a good night’s sleep in Venice.
Once ensconced in the hotel, and after a much needed nap for the jet lag, we
were off on a walking tour to meet friends at a cafe in one of the squares. Venice
on foot is infinite in size because the walkways are narrow, as are the canals
and the tiny bridges. It was grey and spritzy yesterday but the umbrellas
of the cafes protected us from any excess moisture. |
