Venice: The Song of Italy

Story and photography by
Eric Anderson 

 

There are streets more elegant, to be sure, and Baron Haussman built them in Paris. There are streets more legendary lying along the Thames in London. And there are streets more historical beside the Unter den Linden in Berlin.

But there is no street so romantic, so serene, so full of magic as the most glorious street in Italy. You are on it now: the Grand Canal of Venice.

Around you stretch as many as 200 palaces. Many are impeccably preserved though some, because the city is built on water, are faded like beautiful actresses who have seen better days. Yet even with stones crumbling from the years and colors muted from the seasons, the buildings are magnificent. Here's the Ca'd'Oro, 500 years old, now no longer showing a delicate filigree marble facade gilded from top to bottom but still resplendent enough to make visitors catch their breath. Here's the enormous Palazzo Pasaro now the city's gallery of modern art, and nearby the Ca'Rezzonico, restored as a civic 18th century museum. The Rezzonico palace has many claims on history. It was created by the same original architect who built most of Venice's grandest public buildings. Here lived the powerful Rezzonicos; so prestigious they were able to elect one of their family pope in 1758. Here died the romantic poet, Robert Browning.

Across the water in the Palazzo Mocenigo lived another enamored of Venice, Lord Byron, and around the corner yet another, Peggy Guggenheim whose Palazzo Venier dei Leoni is now -- what else -- an art museum. The Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, closeby, was where Wagner died.

But the Grand Canal is not just a tributary of time, a testimonial to the past. It is a vibrant, exciting exhibition of Venice today.

Traghetti ferry a seething mass of locals across its wide expanse. Vaporetti scuttle up and down its broad passage (228 feet across at its greatest measurement) and, as they near each other, their motley passengers shout greetings across the water, the distant hands semaphoring messages.

The motoscafi and water-taxis have more purpose (if indeed such an idea exists in this leisurely land), and almost fly past, laden with wide-eyed tourists. Then, passing by, like the finale of a vast circus parade, floats the rest of the fantasy: the gondolas, black painted, scarlet decorated, romantic, extravagant and expensive, the ultimate sight in Venice, and the very soul of the city.

This city, which rose from its misty lagoons fifteen centuries ago, is in a way a city of the future. It has no automobiles. Here the visitor has to walk. But this isn't a hardship. The ground is level, and every street corner offers a new fascination: an appealing church, a quaint shop, a miniature bridge, an unobtrusive wine-bar, a quiet garden, a sudden statue.

Every humble house seems to have a birdcage hanging outside its windows. The songs of the birds flow into the cobbled streets, across the gray waters and over the pink palaces. Every street appears to have a small square or piazzetta where the tiny fountains sparkle, catching the sun, apparently as enchanted with this mellow city as the caged birds are. Every church presents to the view its sculptures, its frescoes, its ceilings, its paintings. It's as if King Neptune had held the world to ransom, taken all its treasures and scattered them in disarray around his favorite city.

Fortunately for the traveler walking in Venice, distances are short and streets well marked. It takes just a moment to glance up at corners to see the way to major destinations. That sign leads to the Rialto and the bridge that, until the 19th century, was the only one to span the Grand Canal. This one would take you to the Piazzale Roma and its garage for all automobiles that approach Venice -- that sign is best ignored. But this arrow points to the Piazza San Marco, the very heart of Venice. To follow it is easy. You are going with the flow of foot-traffic. In fact, at those times of the year when tourists "discover" Venice and swarm to it, you might find it hard to turn against this teeming tide of people and walk in a different direction.

More than the roads of Italy lead to Rome, the streets of Venice lead to the space, the arena, the square once described by Napoleon as "The finest ballroom in Europe." Here for the tourist is the center of the city. And here for a Venetian empire for a thousand years was the center of the world itself.

You can stand in this square at dawn and see, as if a stage director had ordered a curtain drawn, the baroque splendor of its buildings break through the morning mists and climb into a sky already pink with the first light of day.

Or you can sit at Florian's or Quadri's in the moonlight, nursing your expensive cup of cappuccino, listening to the sentimentality of the violins, and watch the couples stroll arm and arm underneath the arches.

Your eyes follow them.

They embrace by the 9th century campanile bell tower that soars 324 feet above them. They whisper before the Basilica di San Marco, a multi-domed church whose beginnings go back to 830AD. They gaze up at the vast church tower where the great bronze Moors have struck the hours of five centuries. They dream in front of the Doges' Palace, its pink and white frosting made silver in the light of the moon. They brood below the Bridge of Sighs saddened by the shared memories of the condemned passing over it to the prison beyond.

They wander past archives full of Titians and Tintorettos and even the very last will and testament of Marco Polo. They listen to the waters lapping below the granite columns of the Lion of St. Mark and the figure of St. Theodore.

You see them listen and you sense what they hear because you know they are lovers -- of Venice. Indeed, a visitor wrote more than a hundred years ago, "Other cities have admirers. Venice has lovers."

So you know what they hear.

They hear the gulls wheeling high over the Lido. They hear the waves slapping softly below the gondolas. They hear the murmurs of the winds that once caressed the sails of the 3300 ships that comprised the greatest maritime power of the 15th century.

They hear.

And, like you, are overwhelmed, mesmerized and seduced by the Song of Venice.