
Venice.
Venice is the place where I am from.
I was actually born in Lido of Venice but this is another post...
Venice is considered one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I can honestly say that I am proud to be a Venetian. My friends know it, and some like to laugh and tease me about it, but I believe that your hometown belongs to you, is one of our roots, it will never leave you along your journey.
Growing older I began loving this place more and more.
Coming back from the United States I could never have enough of this beautiful island; this marvelous historical capital that stood on its water, the lagoon of Venice, for centuries.
Is an island that stood up against many things: from the Turkish invasion to the horde of tourism that continuously walks all over its fondamenta and calli (Venetian streets along the canals), bridges and campi (Venetian squares); from the moon that manages the increasing of the lagoon, flowing in and out St. Mark's square, but also overflowing canals and leaving astonished Americans and Chinese people walking over small and narrow structures, wearing plastic boots wondering what went wrong; from the war and the disasters that rarely happened during history (a structural disaster destroyed the campanile, the tower in St. Mark's square fell down) to the many renovations that always take place somewhere around the island.
Venice keeps standing up for our pleasure and the joy of our eyes.
My gorgeous island, made of marble and stone palaces, made of happy chattery people, made of churches, light, fog, gondolas, Carneval, Murano, Burano and Torcello islands, made of fireworks reflecting on the water at the end of August for the Redentore festivity.
Made of magic.
No other places are alike.
"Venetian civilization developed in spite of enormous difficulties. It was necessary to reclaim the land from the lagoon, dry out the marshes and embank the canals which also had to be dug and kept open. Even if the land was fertile, there was not much of it and it did not provide enough for the growing community to survive. It was therefore necessary to exploit the seawater which provided not only fish and water flow, but also salt – a precious commodity for the survival of both man and beast. Other valuable merchandise was to be found far away over the sea in the East where the Roman-Byzantine emperor (the Basileus) reigned, supreme protector of the lagoon community. The rare merchandise which came from the interior of Asia was transported on Venetian ships back to the lagoon ports, leaving again almost immediately, going up rivers and struggling over what remained of the ancient passes in Italy, Germany and Bohemia. In the year 810, the same year that the capital was shifted to the Rialtine islands, following its refusal of the Longobard lowland territories, and after the expulsion of Charlemagne’s Franks, the insular Venice of that time chose the sea as the means on which to build its destiny, a choice which was to bring the city great power and fame. It also marked the birth of a people that was to reign over the sea for centuries, and as chronicler wrote at the end of the twelfth century “the strongest people that sails the seas”."
Text from Venice – Venedig, Fulvio Roiter, Vianello Libri
St. Mark’s Square is the most beautiful dance hall in the world and nothing but blue sky is worthy of being its ceiling.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 1810
In all big cities, I spend my time in a fairly small island. The island of San Marco, with its hundred and twenty coffee houses or salons will probably set a limit to my wanderings.
Stendhal, 1845
Cloisters and galleries: so light, they might have been the work of fairy hands: so strong that centuries had battered them in vain: wound round and round this place…
Charles Dickens, 1846
Whatever in St. Mark’s arrests the eye, or affects the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine influence. And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, porphyry, and deep-green serpentines spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield, to the sunshine, Cleopatra- like, “their bluest veins to kiss”.
John Ruskin, 1851
We returned up the Grand Canal in our gondola. We watched the double line of palaces between which we passed reflect the light and angle of the sun upon their rosy surfaces, and alter with them, seeming not so much private habitations and historic buildings as a chain of marble cliffs…
Marcel Proust, 1925
… a charming note of unpredictability, an arcane translucence. We are flying over the sea and out of that sea appears an undecipherable arabesque of signs, hieroglyphics and mysterious letters in some Sumeric alphabet. A strange tapestry it seems, a mandala, an interminable decoration, the proliferation of canals, embankments and small lakes that go to make up the Venetian Lagoon and which, seen from above, make you think of an immense and wonderful Persian carpet.
Federico Fellini, 1987