If you’ve got someone to woo, then a 40-minute gondola ride through the quiet canals from Bacino Orseolo will seduce even the stoniest of hearts. Trips start from 80 euros – the official city rate – rising to 100 euros from 19:00. The average gondola costs nearly 40,000 euros to buy, each smart watercraft being painstakingly assembled from 280 hand-made pieces, using eight types of wood.

Best Books About Venice (24 books) - Goodreads

So Palladianism is for some people the most and for others the second most important architectural export. Do we not know them well, whenever we live, the aesthetic conservers on the one hand, the men of change on the other? Which of these two philosophies is the more romantic, I have never been able to decide." (The City: 22)When you go to a bookshop you want to have a relaxing experience and lose yourself in the world of literature, however we were rushed through the shop with barely an inch between each person. Because of this you could hardly see all the attractions in the shop, and frankly I wanted to leave as soon as I entered. They had staff manning the door, which was pointless in my opinion as they had no system in terms of counting how many people were in the shop at a time to make sure there was social distancing and actually time for people to go through. I was going to buy a book but it was so busy inside I couldn’t even get to the tills. Many characterisations and generalisations are the of-their-time sort; there are commonplace references to housemaids and housekeepers that sound, in this voice, like a hangover from pre-war Britain; there's apparent romanticisation of Italian corruption as quaint; locals described "like figures from a Goldoni comedy". Indeed the Venetians in the book seem a little too much like a scene which Morris describes being filmed for TV: The fashionable eighteenth-century priest who, though courted by the greatest families of the Serenissima, chose to live in a rat-infested garret, and collected spiders' webs as a hobby." (The Lagoon: 26) And I think I'll take the liberty to delete Gaardner's "Christmas Mystery" -- that one's set in Norway.

Books Set in Venice (303 books) - Goodreads

When I said that the Gothic was the great export of Venice, probably more unique to the Veneto and Venice and equally pervasive globally, is Palladian classicism. Andrea Palladio was actually called something quite different, but was adopted by a grandee of Mantua, who called him Palladio after Pallas Athena because he was such an amazing god of drawing. He was a stone mason, as was his father, and had these extraordinary ideas. Italy was the cradle of humanism, particularly in Padua and Rome, and the buildings of ancient Rome were being unearthed. People were trying to work out the lost wisdom of the ancients and the architecture was under their feet. Raphael famously recorded the paintings of the Domus Aurea in Rome. Palladio looked at these emerging buildings and, in the early 16th century, developed a new language of classicism which was of huge significance. Lovingly referred to as Venice's living room, St Mark's Square is where you can stroll, enjoy the sun, and grab a coffee or lunch at the fashionable cafes. Venice breakfasts are light and simple. Expect strong coffee, freshly baked croissants and fruit plates. But, because you're on holiday, you should probably try a chiacchiere. These indulgent, deep-fried pastries are made with sweet marsala wine, lemon zest and vanilla. But, be warned, they are seriously addictive. I found Italian Venice absolutely brilliant. It is a very, very good book to read when you’re there. Some of the stories! One of the things that’s mentioned in every guidebook on Venice is Molino Stucchi, this great big Gothic behemoth of a building on the end of the Giudecca. It’s now got a Hilton in it and, on top of it, there’s a Nutella bar. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t allowed to mention the Nutella bar in my Venice guide. It seemed to me one of the things that everybody would be most interested in. I’ve never been to a Nutella bar before, but if you like Nutella…But that mill was built by an Austrian to feed Venice, and he was beset by a series of terrible personal misfortunes. Eventually, it burnt down, he died, everything went wrong, and it sits there as a great ghost town factory. That end of the Giudecca has also got the woman’s prison and one other prison. It’s not a surprise that it’s the most communist of Venice’s sestiere because it’s quite rough. Yes, it’s a thriller that’s set in the lagoon and in Venice and northern Italy, towards the end of World War Two, in 1945. It begins with the murder of a German officer and it’s about a Jewish woman who is rescued by a fisherman who hides her. It’s an extraordinary adventure story. The fisherman’s brother is a rising star of Fascist Italian cinema and is a great favorite of the local Gauleiter but also of Il Duce. So one brother is basically a partisan and the other is an apparatchik of the regime.Registro delle Imprese di Venezia n. 03069670275 – REA VE 278800 C.F e P.I. 03069670275 Capitale Sociale € 1.885.000,00 i.v. Themis-Athena wrote: "Yes. Sorry for cluttering the list with her books, but she really WAS one of the first authors who came to my mind for books with Venice as a setting!"

VISIT VENICE | VeneziaUnica City Pass VISIT VENICE | VeneziaUnica City Pass

On Venice holidays you can spend days just swooning over its ornate bridges, elegant archways and gilded domes. Romance is just about everywhere you look, from its pretty squares and canals to its beautiful art collections. A real visual feast, just wandering and taking in the sensational architecture of the Rialto Bridge, St Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace and the vistas of the Grand Canal, is a wonderful experience.

St Nicholas of Myra ... was particularly revered by the Venetians, if only because at the Council of Nicaea he had soundly boxed the ears of the theologian Arius, from whose very heresy, adopted by the Lombards, some of the earliest Venetians had fled into the lagoon." (The Lagoon: 30) The book introduced me to an amazing man called Giuseppe Volpi. He was called the ‘Last Doge’ and I’d never heard of him. He was a businessman of terrific acumen and was made Count of Misurata by Mussolini. He also became governor of Tripolitania, which is Libya. He set up the Venice Film Festival and the Biennale and massively changed tourism in Venice as well as setting up a lot of industries. So he set up Marghera, which is both negative in that it has caused terrible petrochemical pollution, but also provided employment. He had a huge effect on changing the place.

Venice - 2023 (with Photos THE 10 BEST Things to Do in Venice - 2023 (with Photos

Searching for Venice hotels on the beach? Look into the Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort. Built in 1908 by the legendary architect Giovanni Sardi, this regal beachfront property features a restaurant with a private terrace facing the sea, pool bar and beach bar offering private cabana service. All Quiet on the Western Front - it's been some years since I read it, but I don't recall Venice in it. Anyone read it more recently? Is Jan Morris's book responsible for perpetuating a certain idea of Venice through the later 20th century? Venice as elegant, decaying, exotic, a mélange and meeting-point of East and West... Perhaps in Britain at least. In this book, I felt like I'd found a key to where it comes from. When I was younger, I managed to do an entire course on the city without being aware of these ideas: this legend is something that lives in the realms of literature and pop high-culture, not academic texts. In arts it seems overwhelming once you've noticed it, almost the only way Venice is talked about, a given in general-audience writing and TV documentaries. Brunetti is a most sympathetic hero who one can only identify with, with his children and his wife who is an academic, a Jane Austen scholar or something highly convincing like that. The children are busy writing their homework, while he’s sorting out gory crimes. There’s also the most marvelous lady, a Miss Moneypenny figure who is a constant through the books, who’s always tutting and letting him in to go and see his superiors. There’s not an overarching dramatic narrative as exciting as the Cruz Smith book, but these books do immerse you in Venice. She’s American, but her complete fluency in the ways of Venice allows us to dive in with her.As you’ve mentioned him, let’s talk about his book first. It’s called The Stones of Venice and the edition you’ve chosen is edited by the British travel journalist and author Jan Morris.