Bella Venezia

A good friend, Rosemary, forwarded an article this morning from Slate, The Casanova Tour of Venice, about behind-the-scenes tours of the Doge's Palace (its pergola pictured above). What exquisite torture to think about Italy during yet another snowstorm here in New Hampshire.

Years ago while living in Florence I got to see parts of the Palazzo Vecchio and and the Uffizi that weren't open to the public; my roommate worked at the museum and was friends with other guards who were happy to sneak friends in through the back. More on Florence another time, however; this morning it is Venice calling.

It's been eight years since I last set eyes on the Adriatic; how can that be so? There was a time when I was sure I'd end up living in Italy. To the left is a picture of Sabina on one of Venice's islands in 2002, earnestly taking notes as always. I found those travel journal pages filed away with the photographs I just brought out to scan, and I think I'll take the opportunity to read them through later today.

On Christmas this last year, Jeff gave me a copy of Edith Wharton's Italian Villas and their Gardens with illustrations by Maxfield Parrish. She is a favorite author and I had visited The Mount, Edith Wharton's home in Lenox, MA, with Rosemary and Henry James a few months before (a piece on this at Cupcake Chronicles). This was a lovely present to receive.

Later that same day Rosemary gave me a copy of W. R. Thayer's, A Short History of Venice (1908), a lovely red-leather volume which has little color maps in addition to a very thorough history of this fascinating place. Tucked into the book was a second present, a New York Times 1906 review not only of this book but a piece on Edith Wharton titled "Ms. Wharton's Epics of the Incognita." Here she is quoted from that article about Venice:



"The foreround is the property of the guidebook and its product, the mechanical sightseer; the background that of the dawdler, the dreamer, and serious student of Italy."
-- Edith Wharton







Here is the quintessential tourist shot at Piazza San Marco. This trip was something of a gift, a free cruise of the Po River won through the fax machine while I was briefly working for a neighbor who runs a travel business. We only had to fly ourselves to Italy and amazingly we had frequent flier miles enough to do that. And it was Jeff's birthday as well.

A month earlier that summer I had traveled to Paris on the Fourth of July for the Henry James conference, meeting up with friends Henry and Robert James. All three of us flew in from different places and met up at Charles de Gaulle Airport for a great time in the City of Light. More on that another time, but this is to say that 2002 was a very good year. It's time for another like it in fact!

2002 was only my third trip to Venezia. I visited there twice while living in Florence years ago. The first time was in October and there was a full moon. I got in by train and took a nap then awoke in the evening to discover a torchlit festival on the Grand Canal. It was so beautiful and unreal in that way that only Venice can be. The next morning it was raining and I packed up and left as I wanted to seal that one evening in my mind forever. It's there.

Roughly translated, the festival was named "Save Venice's Fabrications" and it was spectacular. I've learned since that scientists have used waterline information from paintings by Caneletto as a guide for how much the city has sunk over time. It is one of the urgencies for traveling back there soon; will Venice be there?

My second time in Venice I was with a painter friend. We arrived by train and toured various churches to see works of art. But my favorite image from that visit was stumbling on a funeral. There was a black gondola covered with red flowers docked at a small chiesa. it was such a lovey, poignant image -- the boat balancing on the waves, sounds of music inside the chapel.


Jeff and I had a wonderful time trip; this was his first visit to Italy and Venice was just the beginning. We loved Ferrara, Parma and Verona, but the trip began at a dock in Venice. We were exploring from there and stumbled on a beautiful old park with an elaborate fountain covered with turtles and an abandoned Orangerie. What a gardener's fantasy to see that crumbling building and wonder what it would be like to care for the plants in such a sumptuous place. Imagine the villa that must have been nearby. Oh to be that gardener!

Here's to more on Venice and Italy in general. I started out to write about living in Florence, but that will have to wait for another time. And surely there will lots more on Wharton and her love of Italy, along with another favorite author E. M. Forster. I love to think of my grandmother being born in Florence in 1904 and those things about Italy that are essentially still the same more than a hundred years later.