The Rough Guide To Venice And The Veneto

by Jonathan Buckley

INTRODUCTION Nobody arrives in Venice and sees the city for the first time. Depicted and described so often that its image has become part of the European collective consciousness, Venice can initially create the slightly anticlimactic feeling that everything looks exactly as it should. The water-lapped palaces along the Canal Grande are just as the brochure photographs made them out to be, Piazza San Marco does indeed look as perfect as a film set, and the panorama across the water from the Palazzo Ducale is precisely as Canaletto painted it. The sense of familiarity soon fades, however, as details of the scene begin to catch the attention – an ancient carving high on a wall, a boat being manoeuvred round an impossible corner, a tiny shop in a dilapidated building, a waterlogged basement. And the longer one looks, the stranger and more intriguing Venice becomes. Founded fifteen hundred years ago on a cluster of mudflats in the centre of the lagoon, Venice rose to become Europe’s main trading post between the West and the East, and at its height controlled an empire that spread north to the Dolomites and over the sea as far as Cyprus. As its wealth increased and its population grew, the fabric of the city grew ever more dense. Very few parts of the hundred or so islets that compose the historic centre are not built up, and very few of its closely knit streets bear no sign of the city’s long lineage. Even in the most insignificant alleyway you might find fragments of a medieval building embedded in the wall of a house like fossil remains lodged in a cliff face. The melancholic air of the place is in part a product of the discrepancy between the grandeur of its history and what the city has become. In the heyday of the Venetian Republic, some 200,000 people lived in Venice, not far short of three times its present population. Merchants from Germany, Greece, Turkey and a host of other countries maintained warehouses here; transactions in the banks and bazaars of the Rialto dictated the value of commodities all over the continent; in the dockyards of the Arsenale the workforce was so vast that a warship could be built and fitted out in a single day; and the Piazza San Marco was perpetually thronged with people here to set up business deals or report to the Republic’s government. Nowadays it’s no longer a living metropolis but rather the embodiment of a fabulous past, dependent for its survival largely on the people who come to marvel at its relics. The monuments which draw the largest crowds are the Basilica di San Marco – the mausoleum of the city’s patron saint – and the Palazzo Ducale – the home of the doge and all the governing councils. Certainly these are the most dramatic structures in the the first a mosaic-clad emblem of Venice’s Byzantine origins, the second perhaps the finest of all secular Gothic buildings. Every parish rewards exploration, though – a roll-call of the churches worth visiting would feature over fifty names, and a list of the important paintings and sculptures they contain would be twice as long. Two of the distinctively Venetian institutions known as the Scuole retain some of the outstanding examples of Italian Renaissance art – the Scuola di San Rocco, with its dozens of pictures by Tintoretto, and the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, decorated with a gorgeous sequence by Carpaccio. Although many of the city’s treasures remain in the buildings for which they were created, a sizeable number have been removed to one or other of Venice’s museums. The one that should not be missed is the Accademia, an assembly of Venetian painting that consists of virtually nothing but masterpieces; other prominent collections include the museum of eighteenth-century art in the Ca’ Rezzonico and the Museo Correr, the civic museum of Venice – but again, a comprehensive list would fill a page. Then, of course, there’s the inexhaustible spectacle of the streets themselves, of the majestic and sometimes decrepit palaces, of the hemmed-in squares where much of the social life of the city is conducted, of the sunlit courtyards that suddenly open up at the end of an unpromising passageway. The cultural heritage preserved in the museums and churches is a source of endless fascination, but you should discard your itineraries for a day and just wander – the anonymous parts of Venice reveal as much of the city’s essence as the highlighted attractions. Equally indispensible for a full understanding of Venice’s way of life and development are expeditions to the northern and southern islands of the lagoon, where the incursions of the tourist industry are on the whole less obtrusive. Venice’s hinterland – the Veneto – is historically and economically one of Italy’s most important regions. Its major cities – Padua, Vicenza and Verona – are all covered in the guide, along with many of the smaller towns located between the lagoon and the mountains to the north. Although rock-bottom hotel prices are rare in the ...

Genres: Travel, Italy, Nonfiction, Italian Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Jonathan Buckley was born in Birmingham, grew up in Dudley, and studied English Literature at Sussex University, where he stayed on to take an MA. From there he moved to King’s College, London, where he researched the work of the Scottish poet/artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. After working as a university tutor, stage hand, maker of theatrical sets and props, bookshop manager, decorator and builder, he was commissioned in 1987 to write the Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto.

He went on to become an editorial director at Rough Guides, and to write further guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, as well as contributing to the Rough Guide to Classical Music and Rough Guide to Opera.

His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published by Fourth Estate in 1997. It was followed by Xerxes (1999), Ghost MacIndoe (2001), Invisible (2004), So He Takes The Dog (2006), Contact (2010) and Telescope (2011). His eighth novel, Nostalgia, was published in 2013.

From 2003 to 2005 he held a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at the University of Sussex, and from 2007 to 2011 was an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, for whom he convenes a reading group in Brighton.

Reviews

[Michael]

This didn't float my boat. (See what I did there? Venice... boats...) The travel tips and some of the Italian vocabulary helped me, but this guide better serves as a reference for history connoisseurs than for casual tourists. Forgive me, book lovers, but I found the Internet more useful, especially a few excellent smartphone apps.

[Sally Edsall]

Really comprehensive

[Jack]

This book lacks useful practical information. For example, the section on the Basilica of Saint Mark devotes several pages to the history of the place but doesn't mention that if you are a woman you need to buy shawls to cover your legs and shoulders. Not a big deal, but this is repeated throughout the book and my partner and I kept encountering situations where we thought 'why on Earth didn't the guide book mention this?'

Carrying and looking at the book became a waste of time and energy. This a shame as previous Rough Guides for other places have been very good.

[Charlie' (MyBooksAreCorrupted)]

I have already been to Venice once, but the holiday was all planned for me. So I really want to go back again, and this book really helped me to plan the holiday for myself. It told me some of the best places to go, as well as the history of Venice and the attractions.

[Leila]

Entertaining with good information. I did like the maps and all of the information on accommodation and eateries but I would have preferred something more than historical information regarding the attractions. For me this was a good start but I want to do more research.

[Alohatiki]

Had the best maps of the guidebooks I looked at.

[Julie]

my favorite part of this guide book is the souvenir guide!

[Stephen Chase]

Fun and entertaining!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lamadia]

I mostly picked this one because of the large amount of information on the Veneto region, and not just Venice like most of the other brands. It even included Asolo, which I wanted to visit.