Venice, Italy

A hop across the Gulf from Koper and we're in Venice. Cruise ships no longer dock in Venice itself, so our cruise ends and we disembark the ship in Fusina, an industrial port.

We're staying for a few days in Venice. Our hotel has sent a driver to fetch us, and he deposits us at the single parking area on the island. We wheel and heave our suitcases from the parking area to our hotel, across what felt like 25 bridges, but what turned out later to be four.

This was our immediate neighbourhood, and what quickly became our local cafe (with excellent pistachio cannoli).

It's been a long time* since we were in Venice and I had forgotten just how inaccessible things are. Yes, it's all tremendously pretty and charming, but the alleys are narrow, the streets are paved with uneven cobblestones, and there are bridges with oddly spaced steps every few hundred metres that you have to climb up and down. If you have any mobility challenges, Venice is not for you. (Unless you want to pay for a water taxi everywhere you go, at €80 a ride.)

Venice consists of six boroughs, or sestieri. We stayed in a hotel in Dorsodouro. It was a brisk 30 minute walk to St Mark's Square, or a 15 minute walk + a 10 minute vaporetto (water bus) ride.

We're on the vaporetto, and that's the Accademia Bridge (first photo) across the Grand Canal. If we wanted to get to St Mark's Square without a vaporetto, we had to walk across this bridge, or walk a bit further to cross the Rialto Bridge.

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I had booked for two guided tours over two days. I like meeting local guides on their home ground, plus all the best content for this blog is from their stories! We had a quick pizza to shore up our strength before meeting our first tour guide near St Mark's Square. Pizza margherita is my favourite; note Ken's gloomy expression at the lack of meat.

Meet at 2 pm at the statue of a man on a horse, said the tour booking. The man on the horse is King Vittorio Emanuele II, the king who united Italy in the 1800s. The statue is next to St Mark's Square, on the Grand Canal.

Monica was our guide for an afternoon trip to Murano and Burano, two of the neighbouring islands. They are just two of the 118 islands in the Venice archipelago; there are more than 400 bridges. No surprise that the Venice lagoon and canals are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Murano is famous for its centuries-old glass industry. Venice is losing many crafts, but glass-making keeps going. Historically, glass furnaces were located on Murano to keep the fires away from the wooden buildings of Venice. We're going to see some glass production (which I last saw here when I was five years old) and in Monica's words, some items exhibited for admiration.

It's a 30 minute boat trip to Murano in our speedboat. We watched two glass maestros, both elderly men, make glass items — a coloured glass and a horse — but we didn't see any actual blowing. (My personal recommendations if you're interested in this craft: The Glassmaker, the novel by Tracey Chevalier, and the TV series Blown Away.) Murano seems to be thriving with lots of tourists and lots of tourist shops.

These glass flowers were my favourite artefacts, but imagine getting them home.

It's a longer trip across the lagoon to Burano; the lagoon is not small, at 550 square kilometres. Burano is an explosion of colour ...

The traditional craft of Burano is lace-making. Unlike glass-making, this craft is dying out. I thought it was beautiful, but the products are expensive and ... niche?

Venice developed around 400 CE, when the (western) Roman Empire was in decline and the Germanic tribes invaded the region. The islands — created from sediment brought to the lagoon, together with mosquitoes, malaria and bad air — became a refuge for people fleeing the barbarians. The water was both a protection and a threat: the water is salty, agriculture isn't possible, and any development was threatened by tides and storms.

However, there were two major benefits: the lagoon was navigable and it was salt-producing. Salt = wealth. When Rome declined, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire flourished. Venice was perfectly situated between the Middle East and Europe to become the economic centre of the medieval world through trade. Location, location, location.

Around 1100, Venice developed a huge fleet of ships — all state funded — and a monopoly on spices from the east. Venice didn't produce anything, said Monica, it bought and sold things. It was the Manhattan of the medieval world. During its heyday, one ship came into port every 24 hours. Venice wasn't a military state, but it did excel at being the middle man. By the 1200s Venice was a superpower.

What upset the Venetian applecart a few hundred years later was the European discovery of America. With that, Venice was no longer the centre of the world — new trade routes were opened and Venice lost its strategic geopolitical advantage. Then came Napoleon, and then the Austrohungarians, and eventually Italy.

Venice is one of the very few European cities that is a post-Roman city. It's also one of the very few medieval cities that was never destroyed by another power.

Some refreshment after all that history. My go-to meal in Venice was spaghetti marinara — and look, Ken has a pizza with meat! But we also discovered cicchetti, a sort of Venetian tapas.

Our second guide was the lovely Roberta. You'll be able to guess my age, she said, because Roberta was a very popular name in the 1960s when a singer from Capri had a huge hit with a song called Roberta. Our Roberta was born and brought up in Venice, and now lives in the sestiere of Giudecca. Fewer than 1/3 of the population in 1960 is left in Venice, she told us, most have left for the mainland. Venice now has 48,000 local inhabitants, and 30 million visitors annually. About 6 million stay for at least one night; the rest are day trippers. That's a lot of visitors.

We're climbing the Rialto Bridge with Roberta, over the Grand Canal. It's early on a Sunday morning, so it's quiet ...

... and here's the Rialto from the canal.

So many gondolas! So many young gondoliers! The fancy metal piece on the front of the gondola, called a fero, has two functions: to balance the weight of the gondolier at the back of the boat, and to measure the height of the boat at different tides to ensure the boat can fit under a bridge.

Spot the Bridge of Sighs below.

Our tour included a gondola ride. Such fun! Our gondolier pointed out a few major sights but otherwise just kept us steady. Our gondola companions were a delightful young couple from Sydney on their honeymoon.

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I felt as though Venice is a kind of Disneyland. Not brash and plastic, but a specific place that is confined and contained and maintained for tourists. It's like entering a theme park. You pay your entry fee (there are multiple taxes to come and go in Venice) and you have a wonderful day out, a special experience, in a magical place. Then you go home to your real life and your supermarkets and your traffic jams.

Anyhoo. Each of these grand houses on the Grand Canal, said Roberta, was both a home and a place of business. The room with the balcony was the display room, where customers came to peruse the stock and be entertained. Family bedrooms were above that level, and the servants were on the top floor. The basement (often the ground floor) was used for storage. These are Renaissance constructions, at a time when Venice began to decline — the city was creating advertisments for trade. Think of the facades, said Roberta, as business cards.

Houses are only 2 or 3 storeys tall to 'avoid the sinking effect' (Roberta). Today every house in Venice has a number. Because so many streets have the same name (the spice street, or the gold street, for example), a modern address in Venice consists of a number and a district. Venice is defined by a lack of space, said Roberta. Good luck in finding your way anywhere without Google Maps.

The original houses were built on wooden piles. Building materials were wood, brick and (waterproof) white stone: limestone from Istria, not marble. Every floor level is built across horizontal beams, and every house is off the vertical because of movement over time. Salt continually leaches through the bricks. When salt water dries out, the crystals expand.

The layout of Venice confounds the casual traveller (including us). Colloquially, it has 100 islands and 100 churches — every island has a palace, a church, a public square and ordinary houses. So as we walk through Venice, we're walking through a whole network of islands and old neighbourhoods. Here's a good example. The fancy white building was a palace (now a hospital), and the church is on the right. This is replicated 100 times across Venice ...

On to St Mark's Square, or rather, Piazza San Marco. All other squares are called campos. (St Mark's was paved, all other squares were grass fields.) The streets around St Mark's Square are full of luxury international brands, like airport shopping. Close to the Piazza, expensive Venice becomes even more expensive.

Here's an example. We drink black coffee. We don't have milk or sugar, there's nothing to disguise the quality or lack thereof, and so it's a good standard item for comparison. On our travels through Italy and the Balkans on this trip, the cheapest coffee has been €2; on average, maybe around €3. Our most expensive coffee? From a cafe in St Mark's Square, Venice. (We were warned.) Served by a waiter in a white jacket and on a silver tray, with live music next to us, each coffee cost us €16. ($32 for one coffee!) Two Americanos and a tiny pastry? Almost $100. And the waiter insisted on a tip! We had to laugh.

The clock tower in St Mark's Square, built in 1499, has both Arabic and Roman numerals, a 12 hour clock and a 24 hour clock. It shows the zodiac moment plus the phases of the moon. The bell strikes every hour. Roberta: It was the last thing seen by a condemned person before execution. There's a Venetian saying still used by parents today to their children: If you misbehave, I'll show you the time. (Here's another Venetian-ism. A glass of wine is called an ombre, a shade, because wine was kept cool in the shade of the church.)

Did you notice the lion on the clock tower? The lion of Venice is the symbol of the Republic of Venice. The famous statue on the column (below) was looted from either China or Armenia, no one seems quite sure. But it's also the symbol of St Mark, the patron saint of Venice, with its paws on the Book of Gospels. Rome had St Peter, said Roberta, Venice wanted another disciple. The story goes that merchants brought back St Mark's dead body from Alexandria, hidden in a meat basket. (Peak Venice: trade, skulduggery and charcuterie.) It was important for a developing city to have sacred relics; it was a way to unite people around a common symbol.

While we're talking about lions ... the Venice Biennale is due to open in about 2 weeks' time, so we see posters and various items wherever we go. The giant lions are now permanent installations from a previous Biennale, as are the hands. These photos are for you, H.

The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark (aka St Mark's Cathedral) is a Byzantine church that took 30 years to build in the late 1000s. After all the splendid churches we've visited on this trip, what I liked most was that this is not a painted or gilded church. All surfaces are covered with glass mosaics, which do not fade with the constant humidity.

Byzantine churches have no stained glass, because the light entering the church is sacred and needs to be clear. Byzantine churches are full of icons, pictures that are easily recognisable for congregations. And this church is built with marble, not limestone, to show power and wealth.

It was Sunday, and for part of our visit, the church service was being conducted. We were allowed upstairs, which was even better because we were close to these awesome mosaics.

Now, in case you're thinking that Venetian artists created all this magnificence, many of these glorious artworks were looted from churches and palaces in Constantinople during the Crusades. There's a small museum on the top floor of the Basilica; this is where the four ancient bronze horses that were brought back from Constantinople in the 1200s are kept.

Back in the day, the horses were displayed as spoils of war on the roof of the Basilica. Today there are copies outside, and the real ones are preserved inside.

From the sacred to the political. The Doge's Palace across the Piazza is a place of politics, said Roberta, and all decoration is political propaganda. The design was so sophisticated, she said, that it would have been shocking in medieval times.

The Doge's Palace is a medieval building in Gothic style. It went through multiple renovations, notably after the biggest fire in Venice in the late 1500s. The Doge was the elected authority who held office for his lifetime. He needed to be very wealthy because he paid for the upkeep of the palace during his tenure, but he had little actual power. A few dozen men over 25 were elected to govern, including representatives from six districts.

It's very ornate, from the gold-painted stucco ceilings to the marble floors.

Like the Vatican Museum, grand room follows grand room, each one a tribute to the Doge who paid for it. Venetian artists of the time — Tintoretto, Veronese — painted opulent scenes on walls and ceilings. Venice was the first city in Italy to use canvases. Frescoes did not survive humidity and damp walls, so canvases were nailed to walls and ceilings. This is great from a preservation pov, because canvases are easier to restore than frescoes!

The biggest painting is this one, below, by Tintoretto, and the story goes that it has so many people in it because the artist was paid by the number of heads in a painting. This is the only painting in the Doge's Palace that has a religious subject, that is not political.

Here, too, were the Stasi-type letterboxes where people could denounce others anonymously. All very well if you were on the right side of the law. If you weren't, then you'd be tried and sentenced in one of these glorious rooms, and taken to the prison cells below. Sentenced to death? Your last sight of the outside world would be the Bridge of Sighs and the clock tower.

A final coffee and cannoli at our local cafe with the ducks, before we trundle our suitcases across the bridges (Ken said we didn't need to pay a porter $40 per suitcase), catch the airport bus to Marco Polo Airport, and begin the long trek home.

*I was five years old when I first went to Venice (same trip as Rome) with my parents and grandparents in 1965. My sister took these pics with her little box camera.

The next time I was in Venice was with Ken in 1983, 43 years ago. It was midwinter (we were on our way to spend Christmas in Switzerland with my parents) and it rained all the time.

This really looks better on a bigger screen. www.julie-anne.online