Venice. No people. None visible. None. Zero.

Maurie my treasured barber of profound Italian descent who I think has never been to Italy, is going next week to Rome, Florence, Venice and Lake Como. Mid-August. Could be hell. But his elder daughter’s boyfriend wants to propose marriage at the Colosseum. Can’t say fairer than that can you? Could be anything. We checked the location of their accommodation in Venice: 100m from the Rialto on a line running directly south to the Piazza San Marco. And this is squarely in the middle of the train tracks. The heart of San Marco. Could be murder. And I’ll hear. I’ll be told. (‘Daaaavey … why diddun you tell me? We cooden even get out the front door. Too many people. And when we did the food was shit. Starbucks! I go half way round thu world to go to Starbucks! Cost me a FORTUNE.’)

[An addition 2/8 provided by Helen Beresford, one of her husband Jan Senbergs’ wonderful paintings, and yes, it’s all there: Venice. Marvellous! Thank you Helen.]

Alan loves a map. This is for you Al. We were staying just above the ‘e’ in Cannaregio. The dotted line is the route of the hordes. Maurie is staying just below the second arrowhead.

About 30 million tourists come to Venice each year. Since I moaned albeit quite cheerfully about the number of tourists there in 2010 that number has multiplied 2.5 times. The resident population has declined from 178,000 in 1950 to just under 50,000 in 2023. There are reasons for this and they are all fairly grim, a consequence of anticipating and feeding the desires of the itinerant hordes in the service of profit. And we were there distributing our own version of largesse and making our own contributions to its decline.

So, what’s our story then? The end of the walk was not very far due north from Venice on a major train route. We were flying from Venice to Lisbon. There’s that. Stick with it. But also Venice is violently addictive. It seems that there are things there you simply must see. And the vibe. All those canals. So I confess, only a bit repentant: we’re part of the gang. Suited up.

There is something preposterous about Venice, something that makes you chuckle if not laugh out loud. A city built on piles from the Croatian forests rammed into 120 islets in a shallow lagoon. A city whose main thoroughfare is lined with palaces but which has an appalling problem managing waste. A city whose cultural foundations are deeply serious overrun by haymakers and partying boaties with blasting boom boxes. A city whose identity is built on religion but whose daily life could scarcely be more secular. When I wrote about it in 2010 I called it Disneyland on Water. Maybe that’s why we go. Of course it is.

My list wouldn’t have been everybody’s but in a day we seemed to fit that and most of the rest in as well. Didn’t cross the Rialto. But look:

We’re just about to get into that gondola and go across to the other side 50 metres away for some ostentatiously large sum of money. [I’ve just checked and I need to qualify that. Two euros each which Michael had in his pocket possibly for just such an occasion.] But what are you going to do? Swim? No. Join in. Be part of the flood of humanity who for some opaque reason wants to ride in a gondola.

And the other side included:

Yes we’re at the Piazza and San Marco. Saw the Doge’s Palace. Did it all. Sat down for a drink, and this time I am correct because it is written down in front of me: media alla spina, smallish glass of draft beer, €23, or if you like AUD 37.88 per favore. A cup of coffee €15 (AUD 24.70). We didn’t choose to participate in that way here or anywhere else. An hour or two later we were eating a delicious meal in Cannaregio which was only plausibly expensive having had a very pleasant and substantial beer at a bar on the northern littoral for €8 a pop. (Looks like not that many people. Far fewer than August of course — this is in mid-June — but people were sheltering out of the sun. It was VERY hot.)

I had proposed a plan.

Stay somewhere nice a bit out of the way that’s not too far from the transport you want to use, in and out. Cannaregio? Great. Very comfortable accommodation, two bedrooms, huge kitchen off to the right — we could have a cup of tea!— AND a laundry! Hoorah.

Michael threatened to read all the books during the two nights we were there. A very impressive selection: classical and canonical supplemented by a few racey choices of the airport newstand genre.

The second element of the plan was to go against the traffic and get on the ‘wrong’ side of the Grand Canal into San Croce and Dorsodouro as soon as possible. There are still as many canals and bridges as you could wish for, elegant buildings, long views and excellent ‘normal’ places for food and drink. In 2010 as we did this, I thought, ‘Suddenly, perhaps obviously, as we strolled we found ourselves in a different city, one where people seemed to live.’

It wasn’t quite the same in 2026, but it wasn’t too far off it. We were sitting having our morning coffee and breakfast watching this happen. Quiet, mild and his camera is further away than arm’s length from the subject.

We were on our way to fulfil the third part of the plan, visits to the Accademia and Peggy Guggenheim’s Gallery. I had timed tickets for the latter and the former was on our way.

The Accademia has a great collection of medieval and renaissance art, primarily northern Italian with a focus on the rich vein that is Venetian. (Venice, of course, has been an imperial capital: boats, shipping, trade, a navy, 139 churches, 88 still operating, patronage, plenty of opportunity for religious art.) It is a good place to see stuff by Veronese (featuring strongly this time), Tintoretto, Titian, Canaletto (landscapes of the city), Bellini and Tiepolo (up there on the roof and in high corners looking down at you) among many others. And it has a reputation for being lightly populated. It is on the wrong side of the Canal I guess.

Some group photos:

and a large hatfull of religious mysteries not all of which are necessarily biblical. There’s this one for example.

Early Tintoretto (1555-ish?) Saint Mark saves the slave from torture or The Miracle of The Slave. ‘The miraculous apparition of The Evangelist swoops into the scene causing the instruments of torture to break, nullifying the punishment that the Provencal Lord (seated top right) wants to inflict on his slave, guilty of having travelled to Venice to venerate the remains of Saint Mark.’

There’s an issue here. Saint Mark coming to save someone who has just been to see the remains of Saint Mark? Arid nitpicking.

However, despite the weapon-grade radiance emanating from his head, Saint Mark may not be in time. The slave has already got a stick in his eye and another one looking like it’s on its way down, an axe similarly poised. The handle of the sledgehammer might be broken but what has it already been up to? Plus the hangers-on seem more interested in arranging themselves in a tableau than effective intervention. From Tintoretto’s tabloid period. But he knew his audience. This is one of a set of four big ones focused on Saint Mark, Venice’s patron saint.

This is another of the four.

I do not know what the ghostly figures fleeing off left are up to. (It’s likely that the painting is unfinished.) But this is his Saint Mark’s Body Brought to Venice, The Abduction of the Body of Saint Mark or Translation of the Body of Saint Mark, referring to the transfer of Saint Mark’s relics from Alexandria to Venice. And here is an explanatory expansion:

Saint Mark spent most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt. His body was brought to Venice eight centuries after his death in AD 68. Venice’s ruling class wanted St. Mark as the patron saint for their economic status, so they arranged to smuggle his body from Egypt. While stealing the body, the thieves Buono da Malamocco and Rustico da Torcello hid the body under pork and vegetables. Once they arrived in Venice on January 31, 828, Mark’s body was kept in Doge Giustiniano’s palace. When the doge died, his widow was ordered to build the Basilica di San Marco to house Mark. Fear that Saint Mark’s body would be stolen again continued after the death of the Doge. According to a French monk, Mark’s body was safely stored in “one of the great pillars”. However, when the chapel of Basilica di San Marco was rebuilt in 1063, Saint Mark’s body could not be found. Thirty years after this, it was said that Saint Mark’s body re-appeared, with his arm appearing from an old pillar. After re-appearing, Saint Mark’s body was finally put in a sculptured coffin below the high altar in the chapel.

‘The thieves Buono da Malamocco and Rustico da Torcello hid the body under pork and vegetables.’ The arm … my gracious. That would have been a moment. And the camel? What of the camel? Another panel in life’s rich tapestry I guess. Venetian history. Love all this. So much to be known isn’t there? And some of it at least is there waiting for you in the Accademia.

I have written at some length about Peggy Guggenheim and her Venetian gallery elsewhere. A most absorbing figure. Out there. Full frontal. And her daughter who had the misfortune to be named Pegeen, and whose artwork while pushed hard never toppled over into credibility. And that’s what I thought on this visit: the mountain, mighty mountains and vast expanses, of work on which really good art is built. The collection was slightly musty, and perhaps more about Peggy and her many mates than art per se.

This Miro is the work of a young man. If you knew his later work you could see some of the foundations here.

A Mondrian below. I can’t remember whether it was a window or a painting. It’s whichever you think it’s not. [It’s a painting.] And lovely, but he went on from here.

And I don’t know who did this or its name. (It’s got ‘Le genie de l’espace’ written on it. The space genius? The genius of space? Andre? Yolande? An interpretation please.) But it was striking. I contributed the reflection.

That night I looked at my phone and we had walked 12.8 kilometres not a step of which I regretted.

There’s this.

And there’s also this.

Magic. Some of that will have rubbed off on Maurie and his family. I have no doubt of that. None. It’s Venice.

FLEW OUT. Went to Lisbon. Stick with it.