During our first visit to Venice, in 2017, we stumbled upon a large building covered in canvases next to the central station of the city. The building was open to the public, but we paid no attention to it, for the simple reason that it did not look very appealing.…
It is simply impossible to visit Venice and skip the Palazzo Ducale. The British popular historian John Julius Norwich, an authority on the history of the Serenissima, rightly called the Doge’s Palace “the greatest secular Gothic building in the world”.[1] The Gothic pointed arches of Istrian stone, the elegant colonnades…
Question: why do we find a statue of Saint Christopher with the young Christ on his shoulders above the entrance of the Madonna dell’Orto? Answer: because the church was initially dedicated to Saint Christopher. Not far from here travellers left for the islands in the lagoon, such as Murano, Burano…
There is hardly any travel guide that does not describe the charming little church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli as a jewel box. The building indeed has a splendid exterior made of polychrome marble, and in that respect somewhat resembles the basilica of San Marco. So the term “jewel box”…
The church of Sant’Alvise can be found in the north of the Cannaregio quarter, which is a fairly quiet part of Venice. “Alvise” is the Venetian version of “Luigi” or “Ludovico”, and in this case Sant’Alvise is the Franciscan saint Louis of Toulouse (1274-1297). He was said to have appeared…
The church of San Giobbe can be found in a fairly remote part of Venice and can be reached from the railway station by foot in about fifteen minutes. Our visit to the church started with a minor incident. The church has only one entrance, which has two wooden doors.…
I think this is actually the first time I dedicate a post to a famous square in an Italian city. But then again, the Piazza San Marco in Venice is not just your average square. In fact, my Trotter travel guide informs me that it is the only square in…
A trip to Venice can never be complete without a visit to what is arguably the Serenissima’s most important and most famous religious edifice: the Basilica di San Marco. What is most surprising about the basilica is that, although it is almost a millennium old and has been dedicated to…
The Santi Giovanni e Paolo is known as the San Zanipolo in the Venetian dialect. With a nave that is 101.5 metres deep and 35 metres high, it is the largest church in the city and the principal church of the Dominicans. The San Zanipolo towers above the surrounding buildings…
It was 10:45 in the morning on a lovely, sunny day in picturesque Venice. We had a reservation at a restaurant near the Campo San Barnaba at noon, so we still had more than an hour to spend on the streets of the Serenissima. The Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari…
The island of Murano has been famous for its glassmaking industry for over 700 years. In 1291, the government of Venice ordered all glassmakers in the city to move their foundries to Murano. The official reason was that this move was necessary to protect the city against fires (making glass…
A church is a place where people can find shelter. In July 2017, my better half and I found shelter in the church of Santi Maria e Donato on the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon. The previous sentence can be taken quite literally: there was a violent rainstorm…
Why, someone might ask, would anyone want a church on Torcello to be right next to the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta? This is a fair question, a question that I myself have asked as well. Unfortunately, none of my travel guides could tell me why the lovely and elegant…
When discussing the early history of Venice, we should always keep in mind that settlement in the Rialto archipelago – now the nucleus of Venice – did not start in earnest until the early ninth century. Before that time, the Venetians were scattered across the lagoon and lived on various…