Venice’s Timeless Splendor
The enchanting city celebrates its Middle Age and Renaissance glory through its art, architecture and enduring spirit
- By Marian Smith Holmes
- Smithsonian magazine, January 2008, Subscribe
A jewel of a city audaciously built on 118 tiny islands and a network of waterways, Venice is an imperiled treasure that stubbornly endures. Due to the plodding geological shifts of the continents, the city is sinking at a rate of two and a half inches per decade. A watery demise for Venice by the end of the century may be inevitable.
Many people are determined to save it. From a multibillion-dollar plan to install mobile floodgates to strengthening erosion barriers, the rescue mission has become an international effort.
But it's hard to imagine impending doom when you first encounter this enchanting Italian city. With its maze of narrow streets, hundreds of bridges and dozens of canals linking its magnificent architecture and art, even a wrong turn can be thrilling. The deluxe way to see Venice is to cruise the canals in a pricey cushioned gondola poled by a boatman. "It is a wondrous experience, even though some people sniff at it as a tourist clichŽ," says Eric Denker, a senior lecturer at the National Gallery of Art who has visited Venice at least 50 times. "Gazing from water level, the city reveals vistas, waterfront facades, fenestration and bridge decorations you can find from no other angle." And, he says, the sleek gondolas can detour off the Grand Canal into smaller, less-traveled waterways.
Still, the Grand Canal, the city's main thoroughfare, is not to be missed. In 1495, the ambassador to French king Charles VIII called it "the most beautiful street in the world." And, fortunately, not much has changed since then.
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Comments (15)
A warning: Venice is addictive. My first trip 23 years ago was for 2 days. 3rd and 4th trips 3 days, then one month, then 6 weeks and now I've just finished up 3 months. I joke that eventually I'll just move there for good. Compared to super-friendly Tuscans, the Venetians are a closed-off bunch, with reason considering the hoards of tourist invaders, and living on what amounts to a tiny island with (mostly) nothing but glass shops and hotels is a little weird. But then you start to get into the mode, find where the ''real'' people live, and begin to meet the same faces in what amounts to a small, tight-knit town. Despite all the odds, real life does happen there, in what is the most unique and (for me) beautiful city in the world.
Posted by emily on January 26,2013 | 01:32 PM
Venice is a beautiful city. Spent my 50th birthday there, and stayed in a local hotel...over the famous garden restaurant Locanda Montin, which was the best food. It was fantastic! I did not find the rates horrible at all, but it was a pensione, not a five star hotel. The best deal for sure is when I came back and stayed in late March. It was not crowded elbow-to-elbow, the weather was wonderful and the mosquitoes all dead. I could do a nice brisk walk around the Fondamenta Nuova and take my time sightseeing. You have cheaper rates everywhere but not the Aqua Alta that starts in November. There actually are some areas that look very much like they would have during the Renaissance, and you have the definite feeling of time travel if you don't look too closely at the signs. It is quite a wonderful, quiet place and I LOVE not having to worry about cars. Also loved Murano and Burano.
Posted by Tess Elliott on August 7,2011 | 12:47 AM
My grand mother vertialy raised me, so you can imagine we were very close. She was the person who tought me to dream... To aim higher. She is no longer with me, passing about 15 years ago, but Venis was a dream we shared together. We were inspired by it's romance and beauty but most of all it survival... Almost like the city itself has a will to live. When I visit Venice, in spirit anyway, I will be taking my grand mother with me. Venice, for me is one of the most wondrous and inspiring cites of the world.
Posted by Davina Warth on July 6,2011 | 10:20 PM
I dont know whether I'll be able to visit venice someday or not!!!
Posted by shuvra on April 30,2011 | 12:11 PM
I think the key to Venice is to bite the bullet and splurge on staying a few nights in one of the city's exorbitantly overpriced hotels. Around mid-evening, after the majority of fellow tourists return to their cheaper digs outside the city, much of the city becomes surprisingly empty and that is when it's at its most magical. Walking the ancient stones, hearing your footsteps echo around the little campos, stumbling upon the occasional late-night cafe, lazing on a bridge watching little boats full of happy people, sharing wine, scoot beneath you, then speeding through the night back to your hotel on a vaporetto... that's Venice to me. In the day we kept far away from beautiful-but-mobbed piazza St. Marco, going instead at night to dance almost alone to standards played by tuxedoed string quartets. There is no place like Venice -- don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Posted by RGT on April 25,2011 | 07:31 PM
i went there for my honeymoon.it was breath taking,unbelieveable,unheard of(no cars)what a site,very magical the best western hotel was more than what you could ever ask for the staff was remarkable the room out of a fairy tale gorguese i felt like a princess i pray to go back anyone know of an inexspensive way to travel there (any where in europe)please let me know.happy traveling to everyone & be safe
Posted by tonnette on March 20,2011 | 12:58 AM
The palaces are certainly run down but that's how our European towns often are because of their age. The ordinary houses, as in many historic parts of Europe, also appear dilapidated but if you have the opportunity to see inside their rough exteriors most are beautifully decorated and appointed. A friend of mine has a family home near Toulouse and the houses there are typical of this and each year more and more people are sensitively renovating their homes. This seems to me to be an age old pattern which unfortunately we, in the UK, have not imitated and why relatively few vernacular buildings have survived. A village of them is rare.
Venice is often criticised by Venetians as well as foreigners for being a "theme park" and there is more than grain of truth in this. However, the choice is a simple one either a theme park in which the high prices, together with foreign charity offer the possibility of a future or to let it sink into the sea.
By the way Jason I think that the grand tourists phrase was, "see Naples ans die". Or as we say in Wales,"See Naples with Dai", Dai is a Welsh diminiative of David. Peter
Posted by Peter Stanbury on July 9,2010 | 11:37 AM
i went there it was the most beautiful place i have ever seen!! it was gorgeous and would go back in a heatbeat! if u ever get the chance to go dont pass it up!
Posted by tori on April 4,2010 | 10:22 PM
They didn't coin the phrase, "See Venice and die," for nothing. It is beyond doubt, the very best of the best!!
Posted by Jason on February 1,2010 | 08:31 PM
Before I saw her with my own eyes, I thought that Venice is not that pretty coz I just watched her from the television. Two months ago I had to drop an old country fellow that was eager to visit her and there we were.OMG!It's really amazing and it's the prettiest city I've ever visited.That's my uncle always dreams about.
Posted by Luthfa on February 1,2010 | 03:32 PM
I agree with the two comments above. Venice is a very magical city though the costs are often quite high. And based on what I know, my mother who also loves travelling to Venice travelled with me two years ago and said the place hadn't changed much since she last visited it some twenty years ago.
Posted by Kate on September 7,2009 | 05:30 AM
I too have been privileged to travel the US and Europe and agree with Barbara that it is indeed a magical city. Flying into the city over the canals is like a dream looking down on the beautiful old buildings and the gondolas floating on the canals. It is truly a city not to be missed! We were there in early March and had the city was ours.
Posted by Maryann Gray on January 24,2008 | 02:03 PM
I disagree with the previous comment. I have travelled all over the US, Europe, and part of Asia. Venice is the most magical city, by far. I have heard many complaints from tourists that visited at peak times, but a friend and I went just after Carnival and felt we had the city all to ourselves! I only wish I could have stayed longer. Top of my list of places to go back to.
Posted by Barbara on January 8,2008 | 10:10 PM
Not much has changed since 1495?! Are you out of your mind or depicting a semiromantic dream that occurs to none else but you? The entire political system of the city, the economical situation of its people, the fassades of the once splendid palazzi have all seen various changes over the centuries. Surely the cities image is of a complete different nature in these days and hardly reaches its original Renaissance magnificence. Today´s Venice seems to be no more than a neglected piece of jewelry worn by some underprivileged maid. No, it is not the same and I dearly wish for this city to find back to its roots as a decadently planned place of the ultra rich.
Posted by Claude on December 26,2007 | 03:09 PM