Fionnuala’s review of Venice > Likes and Comments
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Sounds like you really immersed yourself in the city Fionnuala. Such a lovely, higgledy-piggledy review! Cheers 🥂
Thanks for reading through this long scroll, Jeroen! Yes, I did truly immerse myself in the city that Jan Morris claims has 'stood, in the imagination of the world, somewhere between a freak and a fairy tale' but which was more fairy tale than freak in my experience. Well, ok, the Hilton hotel building in the Giudecca area is a bit of a freak...
Fascinating and informative. A beautiful and unique city.
You sound like someone who has also spent time there, Cecily!
Here's a quote you might relate to: 'There are 107 churches in Venice, and nearly every tourist feels he has seen at least 200 of them!'
Fionnuala, what a tremendous review! It must have taken you ages to include all those beautiful photos, too - nice to see the one of you!
I liked the best the paragraph about the unchanged sounds.
A stunningly evocative review!
Thanks for bringing me back to Venice, which I visited some 20 years ago. One favorite memory is of finding, after much effort, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant recommended by Italian friends. Chalkboard menu, not many choices, but everything was delicious. We would have gone back, but we never found it again. It seemed to have faded back into the mist of time, like Brigadoon.
Thanks for that little side trip, Fionnuala. I’ve a couple of Jan Morris’ on my tbr and now must get to them. That spy sculpture is intriguing.
Such beautiful photos, exceeded only by beautiful writing. If your intent was to make us jealous, you succeeded.
I enjoyed visiting Venice vicariously through your review, and lingered around these ubiquitous mirror images you evoked; with the constant sound of water all around, I can just picture the scene. I'm trying to remember the title of a novel I read a while back and that had made an impression about how Venice was explored through it; I think it was Stone's Fall by Iain Pears, which I didn't enjoy quite as much as An Instance of the Fingerpost, but the book did leave something of Venice behind it all the same, like an intriguing impression that lasted all this while, short of remembering the plot in detail. Your reference to spies may draw from a similar pool of imagery, full of old secrets, and calls from the past.
Wow, what a brilliant review Fi, interesting and informative of one of the World's great cities. I loved your "Venice binge" - reading and being there and reading even more material - I'm all up for fully immersive experiences.
We made our way up from Rome, through other beautiful cities and arrived in Verona just as COVID started in Northern Italy. The next visit was to be Venice - but we had to hightail out of there as we didn't want to get 'stuck' over there. Although, one could be stuck in worse places. So alas, no Venice - what a beautifully unique city and your comments about it being timeless are well made. Unfortunately, I can't see your pics - hopefully they'll pop up when I log on later. Great stuff!!!!!
Magical and magistral, Fionnuala - your words, your pictures, the myriad reflections - what a treat! And Jan Morris’ book sounds not only a wonderful companion on the journey but also pitch-perfect to visit Venice by armchair travelling ;)
Fi, Venice is a great subject of discussion with its own category of being. it has already projected a portrait of itself over centuries as you say. I've realised this over years by encountering it through reading about it - I haven't been there. And this book and your review define that encounter with omnipresent texts well. How is it that we can know so much about a place?
It's fascinating how often it comes up in conversation. Recently a friend told me his sister had been living there married to a Venetian and is a trained mask maker. In Melbourne we have the Veneto Social Club, set up by immigrants from the region, they have a football club etc, and a bistro where you get a wonderful meal, a friend's father was one of its founders. And at the entrance to the building, they have a gondola under cover just in case you weren't sure where you are.
But I love the idea of the city as a character, a whole domain of signs and symbols and characteristics, clues everywhere, all you have to do is go find them.
And from my history reading, the place has some very nasty sides to it.
J.C. wrote: "Fionnuala, what a tremendous review! It must have taken you ages to include all those beautiful photos, too - nice to see the one of you!
I liked the best the paragraph about the unchanged sounds..."
Thanks, Jeanne. I was very aware of the lack of traffic when I was there not only for the quietness but also for the comfort of moving around without having to look right or left before crossing a street. And then we took a boat over to the Lido area (to look for the hotel where 'Death in Venice' was set (it's gone)), and the first thing we noticed were the cars. They seemed huge and shocking!
Of course, back in Venice, if you take a vaporetto or a motor taxi, there is engine noise, but in the side canals and little streets and alleyways, those sounds don't penetrate much so you really can hear the lapping of the water clearly. But for you, where you live, this wouldn't be unusual perhaps. Maybe there are few cars there and lots of sounds of water gently lapping?
By the way, Montaigne mentions Venice briefly in his travel journal. It was there that he had a bad bout of kidney stones—which maybe accounts for the brevity of his journal entries. He attended mass in Saint Marc's and dined with an ambassador and saw many beautiful women but not as many or as beautiful as he had been lead to believe he would find—if I understood properly....
Beautiful review Fionnuala, a visual and musical feast! I kept thinking while reading your reflections how awful a city Venice would be for anyone who loves to collect books. Then that last picture came up and I knew that I would never ever move to Venice!
I would never have imagined that one would hear the sound of water in Venice, I thought only the tourists would be audible, it's fantastic that you were able to soak into the stones of venice through your reading and ignore the hustle of the place
Lisa wrote: "Thanks for bringing me back to Venice, which I visited some 20 years ago. One favorite memory is of finding, after much effort, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant recommended by Italian friends..."
Finding good local restaurants is not easy indeed, Lisa, so finding them a second time must be nearly impossible! We had a mix of eating experiences but perhaps the best one was not in Venice but in Padua! We took a boat up the Brera river from Venice to Padua, visiting several Palladian villas on the way, then stayed a night there. While we were wandering the town that evening, we just happened on a delicious place.
The other highlight of the Padua visit was the Giotto frescos that cover every inch of the walls inside the Scrovegni chapel.
Judith wrote: "Thanks for that little side trip, Fionnuala. I’ve a couple of Jan Morris’ on my tbr and now must get to them. That spy sculpture is intriguing."
Glad you like the spy sculpture, Judith, even if my photo doesn't nearly do it justice. If I'd realised I'd use it to illustrate this review, I'd have been more careful!
I'm glad you might get to some Jan Morris books in the future. The only other one I've read is A Writer's House in Wales which was written much later in her life but which was also full of great sentences and a good dose of humour. What more can you ask from a book!
Left Coast Justin wrote: "Such beautiful photos, exceeded only by beautiful writing. If your intent was to make us jealous, you succeeded."
It was an amazing trip—really well planned by one of my companions with whom I've travelled in Italy many times before. She even got us tickets for La Fenice where we saw Mozart's Don Giovanni. There were amazing sets—I'm always more interested in the set construction than in the singing but the singing was very fine too.
We also had tickets for the Peggy Gugenheim which is full of American pieces from Warhol to Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly to Jackson Pollock. It's a big contrast to the rest of the art on view in Venice.
Informative review -- not only regarding the book but the city. I've not been to Italy yet but now think Venice might be included when I go. So far I was thinking in terms of Florence and Rome (such a tourist, I). But the City of Spies and Mirrors might be interesting, too (I've grown allergic to mirrors with age, but that's another matter...).
Jan Morris is particularly good at bringing places alive, with her wide-ranging interests, keen observation and wonderful sentences.
It’s a delight to know that you found her such a source of pleasure in Venice.
Fionnuala wrote: "Left Coast Justin wrote: "Such beautiful photos, exceeded only by beautiful writing. If your intent was to make us jealous, you succeeded."
It was an amazing trip—really well planned by one of my ..."
Planned chaos exactly!
Fionnuala wrote: "J.C. wrote: "Fionnuala, what a tremendous review! It must have taken you ages to include all those beautiful photos, too - nice to see the one of you!
I liked the best the paragraph about the uncha..."
I can imagine the huge and shocking cars after having been spared them for a while in so delightful a manner! Here, our house is just across a single-track, dead-end road immediately above the sea, and the lapping of the waves at low tide is my favourite sound here. I always take great pleasure in hearing it again after having been away. You are right, there are few cars, but enough so that in lockdown the lack of them was blissful. They tend to be noisy if not numerous, those quads for one thing, and for another that we don't have to have a Ministry of Transport Certificate on the island, so people can run around with iffy exhausts!
I have "Death in Venice" on the shelf but have never got to it. It's moved up several degrees on the TBR list!
Thank you for taking us on this fascinating journey to Venice, Fionnuala. There is someone (guess who?) who associated the sounds of the voices of "the young girls in flower" to the sound of music he imagined from Bellini's angel musicians. ... there were in the twitterings of these girls notes that women’s voices no longer contain. And on this more varied instrument they played with their lips, [...] with all the ardor of Bellini’s little angel musicians... I just read it recently and this quote took me on the search of that Bellini painting only to find out that different authors/translators identified three different Bellinis (of course, all in Venice). Lo and behold, your photo of his painting in the church on the nearby island shows the fourth one!
I was so much waiting for this coming and you didn't disappoint, Fionnuala! Thank you for that delightful multi sensorial experience! You made me travel in so many ways: literature, imagination, and yes, memory... I remember that church on Burano. But we did not experience such light, so you made me shimmer from insight:-) And the water reflections.. superb. I loved also that the city seems to be built on books as well:-) What a great time you've had! Thank you for sharing your journey. I feel a part of your trip now as well. Jan Morris seem to be a valuable and eternal companion:-)
PS: I Wanted to add an image to your "mirrors", but forgotten that this site forbid to add pictures to the comments as links and I do not know other way:-( Now I need to read a book about Venice for that, put an image there and link to your review I guess:-) Life never was easy:-))
Charles wrote: "I enjoyed visiting Venice vicariously through your review, and lingered around these ubiquitous mirror images you evoked; with the constant sound of water all around, I can just picture the scene..."
Thanks for a great comment, Charles. Incidentally, Venice was the main centre for mirror manufacture during the Renaissance as they had developed a better technique for coating mirrors than existed elsewhere. They guarded their secret technique carefully but some spy eventually snuck in and stole it!
I remember reading an Iain Pears novel years ago, set in the art world, but it was neither of the two you mentioned. Venice is an ideal place to set an art-themed book though...
It doesn't get much better, my friend! "Jan Morris made me keenly interested in the city ahead of arriving there, and she offered me many great 'aha' moments during my visit when she'd mention something I'd seen that very day. And after I returned home, she comforted me by giving me the illusion that I was still wandering the network of passageways and bridges that knit this city of islands together. "
Mark wrote: "Wow, what a brilliant review Fi, interesting and informative of one of the World's great cities. I loved your "Venice binge" - reading and being there and reading even more material - I'm all up for fully immersive experiences..."
It really helps to know something about this particular city before you set foot in it, Mark—it repays a carefully prepared visit. The first time I visited, a couple of decades ago, we sat around drinking coffee and wine—we could have been anywhere! Mind you, I have good memories of that trip but I hardly saw anything except the Basilica of Saint Mark and the piazza in front of it.
I wish you'd managed to visit Saint Mark's city when you were in Italy, but 2020 wasn't a good time to be there and you had no choice but to go home without seeing Venice.
Anyway, here's a photo of the original horses that used to be on top of Saint Mark's—the ones that are exposed to the elements now are copies. These ones are comfortably housed in a museum space inside:-)
Ned wrote: "Spectacular review!"
Thanks so much for stopping to comment, Ned. Much appreciated.
Ilse wrote: "Magical and magistral, Fionnuala - your words, your pictures, the myriad reflections - what a treat! And Jan Morris’ book sounds not only a wonderful companion on the journey but also pitch-perfect to visit Venice by armchair travelling..."
Jan Morris is great company, Ilse, whether you're reading her while traveling or in your comfortable reading chair at home.
One of the places we visited might be something you'd like if you ever visit Venice again yourself: the Fortuny museum/former home and workshop, with its reminders of Proust and the fabulous dresses and capes his narrator described buying for Albertine. The museum has samples of many of the patterns Mario Fortuny designed for furnishings and for clothes—and examples of some of the very dresses that must have caught Proust's eye when he was in Venice in 1901.
What a delightful review, Fionnuala. Who knew Venice is shaped like a fish? I have never been but Morris paints it like a place I should go (I guess that is the power/magic of a great writer).
Fionnuala, I'm envious of you and Jan Morris for your destinations and your exquisite writing skills :) It's good to know I can experience something of these places through your words and that I have Morris's books to look forward to as well. I've had her Wales book on my list, but can't resist adding this one for another day when I need another travel book to help me dream :)
Thank you for this sumptuous review, Fionnuala. Between your comments and Morris’s - and your photos - I feel as if I’ve just had a short trip to a very special place.
Nick wrote: "Fi, Venice is a great subject of discussion with its own category of being. it has already projected a portrait of itself over centuries as you say. I've realised this over years by encountering it through reading about it - I haven't been there. And this book and your review define that encounter with omnipresent texts well. How is it that we can know so much about a place?.."
Isn't it something that we can know so much about a place we've never visited, Nick? Saint Petersburg is such a place for me. I've read many novels and stories set there, and have often pored over a map of the city plus looked at lots of images, and all that makes me feel I know the city, impossible though that really is.
And Venice has been written about even more often that Saint Petersburg—because of the many expatriates who've gone to live there over the centuries—and it also features often in films. And it's a city that has been represented in art maybe more often than any other too. Many famous Italian artists originated there—and people like Canaletto and Guardi spent their whole careers painting pictures of its churches, palazzos, and waterways, engravings of which ended up on the walls of houses and hotels across the world.
Incidentally, there are very few Canalettos on display in Venice itself. Of course they were intended for visitors to take home with them and if they are now in collections in other places, it makes complete sense.
That's a great comment, Fi, on how we know cities before we've seen them. I love Guardi's capriccios. Set the stage for a whole way of seeing places where people have never been before. And it was a whole movement of artistic representation of Italian cities.
I see Canaletto was inspired by Panini. You know you've seen his work, before you know who he is. It's a fascinating idea. I also like the capriccios because the create illusion of reality. Especially the fantastical conflation if images, like the first postcards.
I get the whole thing with St Petersburg. It's like the whole of America for me. I feel like I know it through TV, books and film.
ADDIT: A tour of Italian capriccio painting, Fi. Now there's a prospect!
Ulysse wrote: "Beautiful review Fionnuala, a visual and musical feast! I kept thinking while reading your reflections how awful a city Venice would be for anyone who loves to collect books. Then that last picture came up and I knew that I would never ever move to Venice!..."
Well, those books were piled up outside, Ulysse, which explains why they look as if they are turning back into woodpulp! You'd be ok in Venice as long as you didn't use a gondola to store your books:
Jan-Maat wrote: "I would never have imagined that one would hear the sound of water in Venice, I thought only the tourists would be audible, it's fantastic that you were able to soak into the stones of venice through your reading and ignore the hustle..."
It's not so hard to avoid the majority of the tourists, Jann. You can avoid a lot of them simply by staying out of the Piazza San Marco and the Basilica because lots of the tourists are day-trippers and only have time for the main sights.
Many of the places we visited were quiet—all the smaller churches, for example, and the galleries and palazzos that house painting collections.
This is the year of the Biennale, by the way, and we had tickets for it. The theme this year is Stranieri Ovunque/Foreigners Everywhere, which is a little funny in the context of Venice and its numbers of tourists to which we were conscious that we added! The theme was treated very seriously by the entrants though. Migrations over the centuries, for example, as well as voyages of discovery and the crafts used for them. The huge number of Biennale exhibits are located in the vast hangars of the Arsenale area which used to be the ship-building quarter of the city. Venice was once the leader in Europe in ship-building, it seems.
As always, the Inspector is SO thorough in her write-ups! The *unicorn* of Goodreads.
Théo d'Or wrote: "..,Venice is the only place where organized chaos is considered a blueprint for urban design. A huge living painting, Picasso brand. Indeed, " bric- à -brac "isn't just a term, but a lifestyle.."
It seems there is indeed a definite organization within what seems at first to be a chaos of canals and alleyways. Jan Morris describes this internal order in her usual colorful way:
There are several different grades of street and square in Venice. The fondamenta is a quayside, usually wide and airy. The calle is a lane. The salizzada is a paved alley, once so rare as to be worth distinguishing. The ruga is a street lined with shops. The riva is a water-side promenade. The rio terra is a filled-in canal, and the piscina a former pond. Then there is something called a crosera, and something called a ramo, and a sotto-portico, and a corte, and a campo, and a campiello, and a campazzo. There are two Piazzettas (one on each side of the Basilica). But there is only one Piazza, the stupendous central square of the city, which Napoleon called the finest drawing-room in Europe. Each section of the city clusters about its own square, usually called a campo because it used to be, in the virginal days of Venice, a soggy kind of field. The most interesting campi in Venice are those of San Polo, Santa Maria Formosa, San Giacomo dellʼ Orio, Santo Stefano, and Santa Margherita – the first rather dashing, the second rather buxom, the third rather rough, the fourth rather elegant, the fifth pleasantly easygoing.
Ken wrote: "Informative review -- not only regarding the book but the city. I've not been to Italy yet but now think Venice might be included when I go. So far I was thinking in terms of Florence and Rome (such a tourist, I). But the City of Spies and Mirrors might be interesting, too..."
I hope you get to Italy, Ken—and can fit Venice into your program. Jan Morris says Venice has produced virtually no poets in its long history, and hardly any novelists either. Isn't that curious? One of the reasons may be that the population has never been very large but still I wonder that such an unusual city hasn't inspired more of the native population to write about it—and has instead inspired so many foreigners to sing its praises in prose and verse. Maybe the natives just take it all for granted.
Stunning, Fionnuala. I was absorbed by the beauty of your words which transported me to a city that I hope to visit.
Who would have imagined I might find myself this afternoon waving at our Fionnuala through the mirror of Goldini's Venetian house? Not I. Such a wonderful review, and timely too. I'd been caught in the dustjackets of two (relatively) new books on Venice just the other day. Which to choose - Martin Gayford's Venice: City of Pictures or Dennis Romano's Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City? I think you made the better choice with Morris...and the gift of Norwich as well.
Of all the beautiful photographs you've shared, I must admit I liked the Scrovegni Chapel best. I could swear that arch is lined with blue velvet. Perhaps, on some distant day, I'll visit and prove myself in error! Welcome back, my friend. And thanks for enriching our armchair travels. ;-)
Lyn wrote: "Jan Morris is particularly good at bringing places alive, with her wide-ranging interests, keen observation and wonderful sentences..."
She definitely has all those skills, Lyn. I could have quoted half the book, I admired her observation and her sentences so much. Here's a line that I wanted to quote in the review but couldn't find a reason to include it, there being few priests visible in the streets these days:
'and sometimes a priest strides silently by in a liquefaction of cassocks.
A liquefaction of cassocks! I just love it!
J.C. wrote: "...I have "Death in Venice" on the shelf but have never got to it. It's moved up several degrees on the TBR list!"
I hope you enjoy it when you get to it, Jeanne. It's mostly set out on the Lido, the long sandbar that partially closes off the lagoon from the Adriatic and which was developed into a beach resort for the wealthy Venetians and other holiday makers who wanted to escape the summer heat of the city—and the various pestilences that were frequent then. Today the stately hotels of Thomas Mann's time have been turned into apartment blocks where many Venetians now live, commuting back and forth to the city by vaporetto, at least according to Jan Morris.
Fionnuala wrote: "J.C. wrote: "...I have "Death in Venice" on the shelf but have never got to it. It's moved up several degrees on the TBR list!"
I hope you enjoy it when you get to it, Jeanne. It's mostly set out ..."
Thanks for that extra info, Fionnuala. I've been meaning to get to it for ages and am more likely to, after your spectacular review.
Fionnuala wrote: "Ulysse wrote: "Beautiful review Fionnuala, a visual and musical feast! I kept thinking while reading your reflections how awful a city Venice would be for anyone who loves to collect books. Then th..."
A gondola in a sea of books, lovely!
Vesna wrote: "Thank you for taking us on this fascinating journey to Venice, Fionnuala. There is someone (guess who?) who associated the sounds of the voices of "the young girls in flower" to the sound of music he imagined from Bellini's angel musicians. ... "there were in the twitterings of these girls notes that women’s voices no longer contain. And on this more varied instrument they played with their lips, [...] with all the ardor of Bellini’s little angel musicians..."
I just read it recently and this quote took me on the search of that Bellini painting only to find out that different authors/translators identified three different Bellinis (of course, all in Venice). Lo and behold, your photo of his painting in the church on the nearby island shows the fourth one..."
Lovely, Vesna! I can just imagine Proust seeking out all four churches and adoring those Bellinis! One of the books I bought while I was in Venice was a little dual language booklet of an excerpt from the sixth book of the Recherche in which the narrator visits Venice. It was lovely to read that section while I was there sitting on a café terrace just as Proust is doing in this photo from 1901—some years before he wrote any of the Recherche. But he may have been writing it in his mind because there was a paragraph in the little booklet that described this scene perfectly. The narrator's mother has just left for the station to get the train back to Paris. He had wanted to stay longer and refuses to go with her. But once she's gone and he's left alone on the café terrace, he rethinks the situation...
Katia wrote: "I was so much waiting for this coming and you didn't disappoint, Fionnuala! Thank you for that delightful multi sensorial experience! You made me travel in so many ways: literature, imagination, and yes, memory... I remember that church on Burano. But we did not experience such light, so you made me shimmer from insight:-) And the water reflections.. superb. I loved also that the city seems to be built on books as well...
…PS: I Wanted to add an image to your "mirrors", but forgotten that this site forbid to add pictures to the comments as links and I do not know other way.."
Thanks for your warm and enthusiastic response, Katia! I'm glad to have been able to trigger your memory and your imagination. How about us visiting the very same church and seeing that Bellini! I think Venice is unique in Italy for the amount of great paintings that are still visible in their original settings. There was nobody else in that church when we were there—they were all over at the glass museum!
Because you are into photographing reflections and mirror effects, I thought you might like this passage I read today in Joseph Brodsky's 'Love Letter to Venice', which you may have read before but here it is anyway:
"Then there were those mirrors, two or three in each room, of various sizes, but mostly rectangular. They all had delicate frames, with well-wrought floral garlands...which called more attention to themselves than to their surface, since the amalgam was invariably in poor shape. In a sense, the frames were more coherent than the contents, straining, as it were, to keep them from spreading over the wall. Having grown unaccustomed over the centuries to reflecting anything but the wall opposite, the mirrors were quite reluctant to return one's visage, out of either greed or impotence, and when they tried, one's features would come back incomplete."
That quote was so exactly my experience when taking the photo of the mirror at Goldini's house that I had to share it!
Fionnuala, having read through the comment thread, there's nothing new for me to add. I traveled vicariously through Venice at your side with joy and delight. And I now know that I can re-visit with Moriss' book.
HBalikov wrote: "It doesn't get much better, my friend! "Jan Morris made me keenly interested in the city ahead of arriving there, and she offered me many great 'aha' moments during my visit when she'd mention something I'd seen that very day..."
You're right, H—it doesn't get much better! And the two books I read after Jan Morris, both about Venice, and both perfectly fine in their own way, haven't offered me quite the same satisfaction though I have enjoyed prolonging my fascination with the city in their company. The book gods were good to me when they whispered Jan Morris's name in my ear as I was planning my trip:-)
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Jeroen
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Jun 12, 2024 01:32PM
Sounds like you really immersed yourself in the city Fionnuala. Such a lovely, higgledy-piggledy review! Cheers 🥂
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Thanks for reading through this long scroll, Jeroen! Yes, I did truly immerse myself in the city that Jan Morris claims has 'stood, in the imagination of the world, somewhere between a freak and a fairy tale' but which was more fairy tale than freak in my experience. Well, ok, the Hilton hotel building in the Giudecca area is a bit of a freak...
Fascinating and informative. A beautiful and unique city.
You sound like someone who has also spent time there, Cecily! Here's a quote you might relate to: 'There are 107 churches in Venice, and nearly every tourist feels he has seen at least 200 of them!'
Fionnuala, what a tremendous review! It must have taken you ages to include all those beautiful photos, too - nice to see the one of you!I liked the best the paragraph about the unchanged sounds.
A stunningly evocative review!
Thanks for bringing me back to Venice, which I visited some 20 years ago. One favorite memory is of finding, after much effort, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant recommended by Italian friends. Chalkboard menu, not many choices, but everything was delicious. We would have gone back, but we never found it again. It seemed to have faded back into the mist of time, like Brigadoon.
Thanks for that little side trip, Fionnuala. I’ve a couple of Jan Morris’ on my tbr and now must get to them. That spy sculpture is intriguing.
Such beautiful photos, exceeded only by beautiful writing. If your intent was to make us jealous, you succeeded.
I enjoyed visiting Venice vicariously through your review, and lingered around these ubiquitous mirror images you evoked; with the constant sound of water all around, I can just picture the scene. I'm trying to remember the title of a novel I read a while back and that had made an impression about how Venice was explored through it; I think it was Stone's Fall by Iain Pears, which I didn't enjoy quite as much as An Instance of the Fingerpost, but the book did leave something of Venice behind it all the same, like an intriguing impression that lasted all this while, short of remembering the plot in detail. Your reference to spies may draw from a similar pool of imagery, full of old secrets, and calls from the past.
Wow, what a brilliant review Fi, interesting and informative of one of the World's great cities. I loved your "Venice binge" - reading and being there and reading even more material - I'm all up for fully immersive experiences. We made our way up from Rome, through other beautiful cities and arrived in Verona just as COVID started in Northern Italy. The next visit was to be Venice - but we had to hightail out of there as we didn't want to get 'stuck' over there. Although, one could be stuck in worse places. So alas, no Venice - what a beautifully unique city and your comments about it being timeless are well made. Unfortunately, I can't see your pics - hopefully they'll pop up when I log on later. Great stuff!!!!!
Magical and magistral, Fionnuala - your words, your pictures, the myriad reflections - what a treat! And Jan Morris’ book sounds not only a wonderful companion on the journey but also pitch-perfect to visit Venice by armchair travelling ;)
Fi, Venice is a great subject of discussion with its own category of being. it has already projected a portrait of itself over centuries as you say. I've realised this over years by encountering it through reading about it - I haven't been there. And this book and your review define that encounter with omnipresent texts well. How is it that we can know so much about a place?It's fascinating how often it comes up in conversation. Recently a friend told me his sister had been living there married to a Venetian and is a trained mask maker. In Melbourne we have the Veneto Social Club, set up by immigrants from the region, they have a football club etc, and a bistro where you get a wonderful meal, a friend's father was one of its founders. And at the entrance to the building, they have a gondola under cover just in case you weren't sure where you are.
But I love the idea of the city as a character, a whole domain of signs and symbols and characteristics, clues everywhere, all you have to do is go find them.
And from my history reading, the place has some very nasty sides to it.
J.C. wrote: "Fionnuala, what a tremendous review! It must have taken you ages to include all those beautiful photos, too - nice to see the one of you!I liked the best the paragraph about the unchanged sounds..."
Thanks, Jeanne. I was very aware of the lack of traffic when I was there not only for the quietness but also for the comfort of moving around without having to look right or left before crossing a street. And then we took a boat over to the Lido area (to look for the hotel where 'Death in Venice' was set (it's gone)), and the first thing we noticed were the cars. They seemed huge and shocking!
Of course, back in Venice, if you take a vaporetto or a motor taxi, there is engine noise, but in the side canals and little streets and alleyways, those sounds don't penetrate much so you really can hear the lapping of the water clearly. But for you, where you live, this wouldn't be unusual perhaps. Maybe there are few cars there and lots of sounds of water gently lapping?
By the way, Montaigne mentions Venice briefly in his travel journal. It was there that he had a bad bout of kidney stones—which maybe accounts for the brevity of his journal entries. He attended mass in Saint Marc's and dined with an ambassador and saw many beautiful women but not as many or as beautiful as he had been lead to believe he would find—if I understood properly....
Beautiful review Fionnuala, a visual and musical feast! I kept thinking while reading your reflections how awful a city Venice would be for anyone who loves to collect books. Then that last picture came up and I knew that I would never ever move to Venice!
I would never have imagined that one would hear the sound of water in Venice, I thought only the tourists would be audible, it's fantastic that you were able to soak into the stones of venice through your reading and ignore the hustle of the place
Lisa wrote: "Thanks for bringing me back to Venice, which I visited some 20 years ago. One favorite memory is of finding, after much effort, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant recommended by Italian friends..."Finding good local restaurants is not easy indeed, Lisa, so finding them a second time must be nearly impossible! We had a mix of eating experiences but perhaps the best one was not in Venice but in Padua! We took a boat up the Brera river from Venice to Padua, visiting several Palladian villas on the way, then stayed a night there. While we were wandering the town that evening, we just happened on a delicious place.
The other highlight of the Padua visit was the Giotto frescos that cover every inch of the walls inside the Scrovegni chapel.
Judith wrote: "Thanks for that little side trip, Fionnuala. I’ve a couple of Jan Morris’ on my tbr and now must get to them. That spy sculpture is intriguing."Glad you like the spy sculpture, Judith, even if my photo doesn't nearly do it justice. If I'd realised I'd use it to illustrate this review, I'd have been more careful!
I'm glad you might get to some Jan Morris books in the future. The only other one I've read is A Writer's House in Wales which was written much later in her life but which was also full of great sentences and a good dose of humour. What more can you ask from a book!
Left Coast Justin wrote: "Such beautiful photos, exceeded only by beautiful writing. If your intent was to make us jealous, you succeeded."It was an amazing trip—really well planned by one of my companions with whom I've travelled in Italy many times before. She even got us tickets for La Fenice where we saw Mozart's Don Giovanni. There were amazing sets—I'm always more interested in the set construction than in the singing but the singing was very fine too.
We also had tickets for the Peggy Gugenheim which is full of American pieces from Warhol to Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly to Jackson Pollock. It's a big contrast to the rest of the art on view in Venice.
Informative review -- not only regarding the book but the city. I've not been to Italy yet but now think Venice might be included when I go. So far I was thinking in terms of Florence and Rome (such a tourist, I). But the City of Spies and Mirrors might be interesting, too (I've grown allergic to mirrors with age, but that's another matter...).
Jan Morris is particularly good at bringing places alive, with her wide-ranging interests, keen observation and wonderful sentences. It’s a delight to know that you found her such a source of pleasure in Venice.
Fionnuala wrote: "Left Coast Justin wrote: "Such beautiful photos, exceeded only by beautiful writing. If your intent was to make us jealous, you succeeded."It was an amazing trip—really well planned by one of my ..."
Planned chaos exactly!
Fionnuala wrote: "J.C. wrote: "Fionnuala, what a tremendous review! It must have taken you ages to include all those beautiful photos, too - nice to see the one of you!I liked the best the paragraph about the uncha..."
I can imagine the huge and shocking cars after having been spared them for a while in so delightful a manner! Here, our house is just across a single-track, dead-end road immediately above the sea, and the lapping of the waves at low tide is my favourite sound here. I always take great pleasure in hearing it again after having been away. You are right, there are few cars, but enough so that in lockdown the lack of them was blissful. They tend to be noisy if not numerous, those quads for one thing, and for another that we don't have to have a Ministry of Transport Certificate on the island, so people can run around with iffy exhausts!
I have "Death in Venice" on the shelf but have never got to it. It's moved up several degrees on the TBR list!
Thank you for taking us on this fascinating journey to Venice, Fionnuala. There is someone (guess who?) who associated the sounds of the voices of "the young girls in flower" to the sound of music he imagined from Bellini's angel musicians. ... there were in the twitterings of these girls notes that women’s voices no longer contain. And on this more varied instrument they played with their lips, [...] with all the ardor of Bellini’s little angel musicians... I just read it recently and this quote took me on the search of that Bellini painting only to find out that different authors/translators identified three different Bellinis (of course, all in Venice). Lo and behold, your photo of his painting in the church on the nearby island shows the fourth one!
I was so much waiting for this coming and you didn't disappoint, Fionnuala! Thank you for that delightful multi sensorial experience! You made me travel in so many ways: literature, imagination, and yes, memory... I remember that church on Burano. But we did not experience such light, so you made me shimmer from insight:-) And the water reflections.. superb. I loved also that the city seems to be built on books as well:-) What a great time you've had! Thank you for sharing your journey. I feel a part of your trip now as well. Jan Morris seem to be a valuable and eternal companion:-) PS: I Wanted to add an image to your "mirrors", but forgotten that this site forbid to add pictures to the comments as links and I do not know other way:-( Now I need to read a book about Venice for that, put an image there and link to your review I guess:-) Life never was easy:-))
Charles wrote: "I enjoyed visiting Venice vicariously through your review, and lingered around these ubiquitous mirror images you evoked; with the constant sound of water all around, I can just picture the scene..."Thanks for a great comment, Charles. Incidentally, Venice was the main centre for mirror manufacture during the Renaissance as they had developed a better technique for coating mirrors than existed elsewhere. They guarded their secret technique carefully but some spy eventually snuck in and stole it!
I remember reading an Iain Pears novel years ago, set in the art world, but it was neither of the two you mentioned. Venice is an ideal place to set an art-themed book though...
It doesn't get much better, my friend! "Jan Morris made me keenly interested in the city ahead of arriving there, and she offered me many great 'aha' moments during my visit when she'd mention something I'd seen that very day. And after I returned home, she comforted me by giving me the illusion that I was still wandering the network of passageways and bridges that knit this city of islands together. "
Mark wrote: "Wow, what a brilliant review Fi, interesting and informative of one of the World's great cities. I loved your "Venice binge" - reading and being there and reading even more material - I'm all up for fully immersive experiences..."It really helps to know something about this particular city before you set foot in it, Mark—it repays a carefully prepared visit. The first time I visited, a couple of decades ago, we sat around drinking coffee and wine—we could have been anywhere! Mind you, I have good memories of that trip but I hardly saw anything except the Basilica of Saint Mark and the piazza in front of it.
I wish you'd managed to visit Saint Mark's city when you were in Italy, but 2020 wasn't a good time to be there and you had no choice but to go home without seeing Venice.
Anyway, here's a photo of the original horses that used to be on top of Saint Mark's—the ones that are exposed to the elements now are copies. These ones are comfortably housed in a museum space inside:-)
Ned wrote: "Spectacular review!"Thanks so much for stopping to comment, Ned. Much appreciated.
Ilse wrote: "Magical and magistral, Fionnuala - your words, your pictures, the myriad reflections - what a treat! And Jan Morris’ book sounds not only a wonderful companion on the journey but also pitch-perfect to visit Venice by armchair travelling..."Jan Morris is great company, Ilse, whether you're reading her while traveling or in your comfortable reading chair at home.
One of the places we visited might be something you'd like if you ever visit Venice again yourself: the Fortuny museum/former home and workshop, with its reminders of Proust and the fabulous dresses and capes his narrator described buying for Albertine. The museum has samples of many of the patterns Mario Fortuny designed for furnishings and for clothes—and examples of some of the very dresses that must have caught Proust's eye when he was in Venice in 1901.
What a delightful review, Fionnuala. Who knew Venice is shaped like a fish? I have never been but Morris paints it like a place I should go (I guess that is the power/magic of a great writer).
Fionnuala, I'm envious of you and Jan Morris for your destinations and your exquisite writing skills :) It's good to know I can experience something of these places through your words and that I have Morris's books to look forward to as well. I've had her Wales book on my list, but can't resist adding this one for another day when I need another travel book to help me dream :)
Thank you for this sumptuous review, Fionnuala. Between your comments and Morris’s - and your photos - I feel as if I’ve just had a short trip to a very special place.
Nick wrote: "Fi, Venice is a great subject of discussion with its own category of being. it has already projected a portrait of itself over centuries as you say. I've realised this over years by encountering it through reading about it - I haven't been there. And this book and your review define that encounter with omnipresent texts well. How is it that we can know so much about a place?.."Isn't it something that we can know so much about a place we've never visited, Nick? Saint Petersburg is such a place for me. I've read many novels and stories set there, and have often pored over a map of the city plus looked at lots of images, and all that makes me feel I know the city, impossible though that really is.
And Venice has been written about even more often that Saint Petersburg—because of the many expatriates who've gone to live there over the centuries—and it also features often in films. And it's a city that has been represented in art maybe more often than any other too. Many famous Italian artists originated there—and people like Canaletto and Guardi spent their whole careers painting pictures of its churches, palazzos, and waterways, engravings of which ended up on the walls of houses and hotels across the world.
Incidentally, there are very few Canalettos on display in Venice itself. Of course they were intended for visitors to take home with them and if they are now in collections in other places, it makes complete sense.
That's a great comment, Fi, on how we know cities before we've seen them. I love Guardi's capriccios. Set the stage for a whole way of seeing places where people have never been before. And it was a whole movement of artistic representation of Italian cities. I see Canaletto was inspired by Panini. You know you've seen his work, before you know who he is. It's a fascinating idea. I also like the capriccios because the create illusion of reality. Especially the fantastical conflation if images, like the first postcards.
I get the whole thing with St Petersburg. It's like the whole of America for me. I feel like I know it through TV, books and film.
ADDIT: A tour of Italian capriccio painting, Fi. Now there's a prospect!
Ulysse wrote: "Beautiful review Fionnuala, a visual and musical feast! I kept thinking while reading your reflections how awful a city Venice would be for anyone who loves to collect books. Then that last picture came up and I knew that I would never ever move to Venice!..."Well, those books were piled up outside, Ulysse, which explains why they look as if they are turning back into woodpulp! You'd be ok in Venice as long as you didn't use a gondola to store your books:
Jan-Maat wrote: "I would never have imagined that one would hear the sound of water in Venice, I thought only the tourists would be audible, it's fantastic that you were able to soak into the stones of venice through your reading and ignore the hustle..."It's not so hard to avoid the majority of the tourists, Jann. You can avoid a lot of them simply by staying out of the Piazza San Marco and the Basilica because lots of the tourists are day-trippers and only have time for the main sights.
Many of the places we visited were quiet—all the smaller churches, for example, and the galleries and palazzos that house painting collections.
This is the year of the Biennale, by the way, and we had tickets for it. The theme this year is Stranieri Ovunque/Foreigners Everywhere, which is a little funny in the context of Venice and its numbers of tourists to which we were conscious that we added! The theme was treated very seriously by the entrants though. Migrations over the centuries, for example, as well as voyages of discovery and the crafts used for them. The huge number of Biennale exhibits are located in the vast hangars of the Arsenale area which used to be the ship-building quarter of the city. Venice was once the leader in Europe in ship-building, it seems.
As always, the Inspector is SO thorough in her write-ups! The *unicorn* of Goodreads.
Théo d'Or wrote: "..,Venice is the only place where organized chaos is considered a blueprint for urban design. A huge living painting, Picasso brand. Indeed, " bric- à -brac "isn't just a term, but a lifestyle.."It seems there is indeed a definite organization within what seems at first to be a chaos of canals and alleyways. Jan Morris describes this internal order in her usual colorful way:
There are several different grades of street and square in Venice. The fondamenta is a quayside, usually wide and airy. The calle is a lane. The salizzada is a paved alley, once so rare as to be worth distinguishing. The ruga is a street lined with shops. The riva is a water-side promenade. The rio terra is a filled-in canal, and the piscina a former pond. Then there is something called a crosera, and something called a ramo, and a sotto-portico, and a corte, and a campo, and a campiello, and a campazzo. There are two Piazzettas (one on each side of the Basilica). But there is only one Piazza, the stupendous central square of the city, which Napoleon called the finest drawing-room in Europe. Each section of the city clusters about its own square, usually called a campo because it used to be, in the virginal days of Venice, a soggy kind of field. The most interesting campi in Venice are those of San Polo, Santa Maria Formosa, San Giacomo dellʼ Orio, Santo Stefano, and Santa Margherita – the first rather dashing, the second rather buxom, the third rather rough, the fourth rather elegant, the fifth pleasantly easygoing.
Ken wrote: "Informative review -- not only regarding the book but the city. I've not been to Italy yet but now think Venice might be included when I go. So far I was thinking in terms of Florence and Rome (such a tourist, I). But the City of Spies and Mirrors might be interesting, too..."I hope you get to Italy, Ken—and can fit Venice into your program. Jan Morris says Venice has produced virtually no poets in its long history, and hardly any novelists either. Isn't that curious? One of the reasons may be that the population has never been very large but still I wonder that such an unusual city hasn't inspired more of the native population to write about it—and has instead inspired so many foreigners to sing its praises in prose and verse. Maybe the natives just take it all for granted.
Stunning, Fionnuala. I was absorbed by the beauty of your words which transported me to a city that I hope to visit.
Who would have imagined I might find myself this afternoon waving at our Fionnuala through the mirror of Goldini's Venetian house? Not I. Such a wonderful review, and timely too. I'd been caught in the dustjackets of two (relatively) new books on Venice just the other day. Which to choose - Martin Gayford's Venice: City of Pictures or Dennis Romano's Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City? I think you made the better choice with Morris...and the gift of Norwich as well.Of all the beautiful photographs you've shared, I must admit I liked the Scrovegni Chapel best. I could swear that arch is lined with blue velvet. Perhaps, on some distant day, I'll visit and prove myself in error! Welcome back, my friend. And thanks for enriching our armchair travels. ;-)
Lyn wrote: "Jan Morris is particularly good at bringing places alive, with her wide-ranging interests, keen observation and wonderful sentences..."She definitely has all those skills, Lyn. I could have quoted half the book, I admired her observation and her sentences so much. Here's a line that I wanted to quote in the review but couldn't find a reason to include it, there being few priests visible in the streets these days:
'and sometimes a priest strides silently by in a liquefaction of cassocks.
A liquefaction of cassocks! I just love it!
J.C. wrote: "...I have "Death in Venice" on the shelf but have never got to it. It's moved up several degrees on the TBR list!"I hope you enjoy it when you get to it, Jeanne. It's mostly set out on the Lido, the long sandbar that partially closes off the lagoon from the Adriatic and which was developed into a beach resort for the wealthy Venetians and other holiday makers who wanted to escape the summer heat of the city—and the various pestilences that were frequent then. Today the stately hotels of Thomas Mann's time have been turned into apartment blocks where many Venetians now live, commuting back and forth to the city by vaporetto, at least according to Jan Morris.
Fionnuala wrote: "J.C. wrote: "...I have "Death in Venice" on the shelf but have never got to it. It's moved up several degrees on the TBR list!"I hope you enjoy it when you get to it, Jeanne. It's mostly set out ..."
Thanks for that extra info, Fionnuala. I've been meaning to get to it for ages and am more likely to, after your spectacular review.
Fionnuala wrote: "Ulysse wrote: "Beautiful review Fionnuala, a visual and musical feast! I kept thinking while reading your reflections how awful a city Venice would be for anyone who loves to collect books. Then th..."A gondola in a sea of books, lovely!
Vesna wrote: "Thank you for taking us on this fascinating journey to Venice, Fionnuala. There is someone (guess who?) who associated the sounds of the voices of "the young girls in flower" to the sound of music he imagined from Bellini's angel musicians. ... "there were in the twitterings of these girls notes that women’s voices no longer contain. And on this more varied instrument they played with their lips, [...] with all the ardor of Bellini’s little angel musicians..."I just read it recently and this quote took me on the search of that Bellini painting only to find out that different authors/translators identified three different Bellinis (of course, all in Venice). Lo and behold, your photo of his painting in the church on the nearby island shows the fourth one..."
Lovely, Vesna! I can just imagine Proust seeking out all four churches and adoring those Bellinis! One of the books I bought while I was in Venice was a little dual language booklet of an excerpt from the sixth book of the Recherche in which the narrator visits Venice. It was lovely to read that section while I was there sitting on a café terrace just as Proust is doing in this photo from 1901—some years before he wrote any of the Recherche. But he may have been writing it in his mind because there was a paragraph in the little booklet that described this scene perfectly. The narrator's mother has just left for the station to get the train back to Paris. He had wanted to stay longer and refuses to go with her. But once she's gone and he's left alone on the café terrace, he rethinks the situation...
Katia wrote: "I was so much waiting for this coming and you didn't disappoint, Fionnuala! Thank you for that delightful multi sensorial experience! You made me travel in so many ways: literature, imagination, and yes, memory... I remember that church on Burano. But we did not experience such light, so you made me shimmer from insight:-) And the water reflections.. superb. I loved also that the city seems to be built on books as well...…PS: I Wanted to add an image to your "mirrors", but forgotten that this site forbid to add pictures to the comments as links and I do not know other way.."
Thanks for your warm and enthusiastic response, Katia! I'm glad to have been able to trigger your memory and your imagination. How about us visiting the very same church and seeing that Bellini! I think Venice is unique in Italy for the amount of great paintings that are still visible in their original settings. There was nobody else in that church when we were there—they were all over at the glass museum!
Because you are into photographing reflections and mirror effects, I thought you might like this passage I read today in Joseph Brodsky's 'Love Letter to Venice', which you may have read before but here it is anyway:
"Then there were those mirrors, two or three in each room, of various sizes, but mostly rectangular. They all had delicate frames, with well-wrought floral garlands...which called more attention to themselves than to their surface, since the amalgam was invariably in poor shape. In a sense, the frames were more coherent than the contents, straining, as it were, to keep them from spreading over the wall. Having grown unaccustomed over the centuries to reflecting anything but the wall opposite, the mirrors were quite reluctant to return one's visage, out of either greed or impotence, and when they tried, one's features would come back incomplete."
That quote was so exactly my experience when taking the photo of the mirror at Goldini's house that I had to share it!
Fionnuala, having read through the comment thread, there's nothing new for me to add. I traveled vicariously through Venice at your side with joy and delight. And I now know that I can re-visit with Moriss' book.
HBalikov wrote: "It doesn't get much better, my friend! "Jan Morris made me keenly interested in the city ahead of arriving there, and she offered me many great 'aha' moments during my visit when she'd mention something I'd seen that very day..."You're right, H—it doesn't get much better! And the two books I read after Jan Morris, both about Venice, and both perfectly fine in their own way, haven't offered me quite the same satisfaction though I have enjoyed prolonging my fascination with the city in their company. The book gods were good to me when they whispered Jan Morris's name in my ear as I was planning my trip:-)
