The Castello District

The breakfast at Al Codega is as good as Palazzo Bezzi (in Ravenna). Muesli, cheese, sometimes meat and eggs, cafe - forget the breads. I am looking forward to tomorrow. Today Leah was our local tour guide. Her father's family have been in Venice for 200 years, and she lives behind the first place we visited, the Greek Orthodox Church. This is the most important Greek Orthodox Church in Italy.

Before getting to sites, Leah explained how Venetians obtained water. In our own courtyard, like 8,000 other places was a sloping pavement that allowed water to enter several holes in the pavement (I saw one with nine holes). A white painted area surrounding it showed where the cistern beneath the pavement extended. Above ground was a well, and each of these 8,000 still functioning wells has depressions in the concrete setting to allow people to check the safety of the water. We saw this same pattern through the city.

Our well, cistern inlet and Leah

She also explained the numbers on every building, being the address of the building. Each district starts with a different number. Our district, Castello, has numbers starting with a 4. Our hotel is number 4435.

Onward to the Greek Orthodox Church. The streets of Venice were once the canals, so that the front of a building faced onto the canal. Here we see the rather plain facade of the Greek church, and the ever so slightly leaning bell tower. Venice is built on wooden pylons driven into the bedrock, hundreds of years ago. Due to anaerobic conditions, i.e. no oxygen under the ground, the wood tends to petrify rather than rot. So inevitably the building settle into their final position. The leaning tower is quite stable and should not lean any more!

Facade of Greek church


Interior of Greek Church

There were loads of photos taken as I saw a different type of buildings, really lovely ones, really crappy ones, the garbage barge, cafe culture, icons and more icons. I think there will be fewer photos in coming days of the streets of Venice. Although every day we go to a different part of Venice!

Me with St Mark's lion

A 'double' canal

A 'double' bridge

The next church was the Church of Saints John and Paul. A wedding was about to start so we had to come back after lunch. We got a sneak peek though. The wooden beams are needed to stop the buildings from moving on the stilts, and we saw them in all the really big buildings.


Being yet another beautiful sunny day, it was often 'washing day'. Here we see sheets!



Tomorrow we go to the Islands - Murano (glassworks), Burano (colourful homes of fishermen) and Torcello (earliest settlement of Venice).


Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 4, 2026 at 9:56 AM

    That’s a friendly looking lion you’re patting. 😀 KP

    ReplyDelete
  2. PiMMay 5, 2026 at 8:41 AM

    Nan i like when you are in the photos cause it is funnier 😀

    ReplyDelete

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