Venice Unmasked

Venice- a virtual kaleidescope of colour and movement, charm, and surprises around every corner.

Now, grab a coffee and settle back because this one’s a marathon! Just hope it’s worth the read.

As we have been to Venice a number of times but have never stayed for longer than a day, we decided this time, to  spend a couple of days and nights.  We are on our own, and so the choices are ours to make.  And we have made some good ones, mostly just through luck. The hotel is one of them. It is set in a piazza- where else in Italy- that is only a 5 minute walk from San Marco Piazza. It’s very fancy and built on a canal.

Bill has had the best time, leaning out of the window, watching the boats that carry the food and drink unloading their goods for the restaurants and bars around the area.  I have enjoyed watching the gondolas under the window and there are singers accompanying the passengers and the music is wonderful. This morning, a guy with the voice of an angel, was singing arias and Santa Lucia and O Sole Mio.  This afternoon, we were in luck again and the singer was just as good but sang different songs, so we had two free concerts.  Each singer is accompanied by his personal accordion player.

Santa Maria della Salute

Yesterday, armed with a map and a 2 day ticket for the vaporetti, the ferries that buzz about the canals with such gusto, we set off to find Santa Maria della Salute, a church that we had seen across the Grande Canal many times but had never had time to visit.  We were so pleased we went.

The church was constructed in the 17^th C in thanksgiving after Venice had been freed of the plague.  Salute means “good health” so that is appropriate when we think of the plague and the reason for the building of the Church. The inside of the church is very different from many of the churches we have seen. It is an octagonal building with a skylight in the very top of the dome that draws the eye from the centre of the church, upwards to the ring of saintly sculptures near the roof, and then to the skylight itself.  The floor is made of marble mosaics and hanging from the skylight to just above eye height, is a fabulous chandelier.  Just exquisite.

After we left the church, we wandered at will through tiny streets and wide piazze  till we were almost totally lost.  Around this time, we found a bridge which brought us back to the main island, very near our hotel.

Behind our hotel is a very old church with a campanile that leans more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa!  True!  We tried every method possible to get close to it but each time we were thwarted by canals, so in the end, we gave up and sat in a piazza in sight of the church and had a drink while we contemplated the angle. 

We asked one of the waiters about it and he said that because the lean is so acute, it is measured- wait for this- every 2 hours !!!!  Can you imagine it! So I’m glad I took the photos, even though they don’t really show the tower leaning to the extent that it actually does.

Today we went to Murano, one of the many Venetian islands and the one that is inhabited by the glass makers.  We were collected from the back door of the hotel by a water taxi and whisked off to the Signoretti family’s complex on the island.  

We had watched glass making in Venice and other places but had never really had a proper explanation of the processes and intracacies of the art.  Paulo was our guide today and he was so knowledgeable. In the workshop where we were, there were three men, one of them the senior craftsman and the others his helpers.  Very often, the workshop which is open to the public is one which is for demonstration only, but this workshop, like the other 11 belonging to this dynasty, is a working one and the master ( head workman) was making parts for chandeliers. He was so quick and precise and clever, but Paolo said that although this man had been working for years since his apprenticeship finished, he would not be considered a master craftsman till he was in his 60’s or 70’s, such is the complexity of the work. The apprenticeship takes 15 years! And students can’t begin under 16 years of age, so imagine, the craftsman isn’t finished his training till he is at least 31!

After we had watched him work for a while, he told Paolo that he would demonstrate the making of a horse. From start to finish, it would have taken no more than 5 minutes and was a joy to watch.

We were taken upstairs then, to the showrooms which were full of exquisite works of art.  Everything from huge chandeliers to the tiniest of figurines. One room of the 8 or so was filled with the work of the master craftsman.  He is 65 years old and has only been considered a master for about 5 years.  His situation is different from the master (boss person) in the workshop where we had been earlier.  Apparently, the workers specialise in a chosen area and gradually they can extend their repertoire with other types of glass art, until they are making all the different varieties, with multiple colours and textures.  This master’s work was absolutely beautiful.  The colours were vibrant and mixed and the shapes of the vases and abstract pieces were breathtaking. So, of course, were the prices.  One vase that Bill particularly admired was 6.5 thousand euros!  We didn’t but it!

We did, however, buy tumblers and a carafe that are in wonderful colours and patterns.  We had admired the style in the various shops near the Grande Canal but when we saw these we were amazed at the quality and the colours. We were reasonably amazed by the price, too, but we will use them with you all when you are with us because they are beautiful works of art that are made, we feel, more beautiful when used in the company of friends and family. And drinking wine with you from them will dull the pain of the price!

We were not allowed to take photos of anything in the workshop so we couldn’t take a picture of what we had bought. Hopefully, it will arrive unscathed, in the next couple of months, and then we can show it off and use it.

The Signoretti family is an interesting one.  They own the oldest glass factory on Murano island, dating as it does from the 1300’s.  However, their family didn’t start the workshops. They were gondoliers, but in the 16^th C the patriarch of the family bought the workshops which had fallen into disuse and subsequent disrepair and hired artisans to rebuild the business.  The Signoretti family still runs the business and they also still have interests on the canal in the form of water taxis.  So just as the glass art has taken a modern twist, so has their water business, from the wonderful old gondola trade to the fast paced, sleek water taxis, one of which transported us so swiftly to and from the factory today.

The remainder of today was once again spent in losing ourselves in the narrow winding streets and finding ourselves again, often not easily as the little streets and bridges often appear the same to the uninitiated, but it was all fun and interesting, except for the 

church with its leaning tower that we couldn’t get close to.

We visited an exhibition of ancient musical instruments today & I took some photos of the very old flutes from centuries ago as I thought Mikaela would like to see them.  She likes her flute and I’m sure will be even happier with it after she’s seen the varieties that were played in the Renaissance times.

We have enjoyed Venice very much- we always enjoy Venice very much but now we feel we really know her, because we have penetrated the Venetian veneer that is the tourist experience and have seen behind the mask and learnt what we always suspected, that Venice resembles a woman of many parts, which only become evident when we are allowed to experience her in all her moods and moments- without the makeup and the mask.

Salute Venezia !