Venice

Peggy Guggenheim, who lived the last 40 years of her life in Venice, said: “To live in Venice or even to visit it means that you fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else”.

And oh is it beautiful, even in it’s wretched, flooded, over-loved state. One reason we’ve left Venice so far down the list of places we’ve come to is because of the reports of over-tourism. Hordes of tourists over running the fragile place that is Venice.

We’re sure it’s true, but it’s not true this week. It’s as though we’ve been left Venice for ourselves. Sure there are tourists here now, but they are fewer than we saw in Barcelona at this same time three hears ago. It’s been a delightful surprise.

We have a relatively leisurely schedule on this trip, with five days to discover Venice. One of those days is Christmas Day, so really just four days of things being open. So one our first day our goals were modest: see Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man at the Gallerie dell’Accademia and to see the modern art at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Our first stop was the Gallerie to see Da Vinci’s Virtuvian Man. What is the Vitruvian Man? Da Vinci drew “The Vitruvian Man”, known also as “the proportions of the human body according to Vetruvius”.

“To visit it means that you fall in love with the city itself…”

Peggy Guggenheim

Rendered in pen, ink and metalpoint on paper, the piece depicts an idealized nude male standing within a square and a circle.

Sadly the Vetruvian Man was not on show right now, so we’ll have to settle for seeing a picture from the internet.

From there we walked over to the Guggenheim Collection and were thrilled with the Pollock’s, Rothko’s, Calder’s, and on and on it went. What an amazing collection of art that she assembled!

They are all housed in the palazzo in which she lived her last years. The palazzo itself is beautiful. Just imagine if this were the view from your living room.

We have purchased an ACTV 7-day transport card which gives you the permission to ride the city’s vaporetti (or water busses) on an unlimited basis for 7 days. An excellent deal for €60 when you consider that a single ride is €7.50. If you want to get anywhere across the city, this is the way to do it.

So after our visit to the Guggenheim, we kept walking towards the point of the island we were on to see the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute.

Gorgeous.

Like a movie set brought to life.

And then we arrived at the Basilica.

The Basilica itself is fairly unremarkable, but it is notable as it was built starting in 1630 after a unusually harsh breakout of the plague that killed around 46,000 Venetians. The Basilica was built as an offering of thanks to the Virgin Mary who they believed delivered Venice from the plague. It sits opposite the Lagoon from Piazza San Marco and so you get a distant view of the buildings around the piazza.

It was time to sit down after miles of walking, so we took a vaporetto across the water to Piazza San Marco and had a beer to kick off happy hour.

After a suitable rest period we got back on a vapoeretto to return to our hotel. Along the way just look at what we saw!

Here is the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute from the water with the sun shining through the glass in the dome.

Then a view of the Grand Canal as we went along.

The sun was setting so the light was just perfect. This is the Pone del Accademia, which is the largest wooden bridge in Venice.

Then, of course, the world famous Rialto Bridge.

Which is where we disembarked as the vaporetto stop at Rialto is close to our hotel. We walked up and over the Rialto Bridge and caught a couple of beautiful sunset views.

And finally back to our hotel room, from which we have this amazing view.

Venice is nothing short of gorgeous. When there is so much beauty in the world it’s always surprising to see more. We have another four days to continue exploring!