A Buchan Odyssey

Some might have considered missing this tour, and they did. But they missed something special. The line for preview of the Biennale, and some fabulous ships. Biennale is about to begin, and we are spotting installations everywhere - see separate post. Yesterday outside a cathedral we saw 20+ trees in pots, today they are gone! They were clearly in transit. Although less 'uninterpretable' than most' modern art, with St Mark's Square Bell Tower across the water Venice was a maritime power of the middle ages. Built on water, they became skilful sailors of the Mediterranean (west of Italy) and Adriatic (north east of Italy) seas. Their low bottomed boats were manoeuvrable, and they had both cargo boats and war ships. By the 1300s they had instituted an industrial sized assembly line for ships, that could assemble a war ship in 24 hours. How is this possible? Clever Venetians prepared all the different parts in a sequence from the outer hull to the final fitting of mast and ...

 The Armenians are a very proud, but under-recognised people.  Armenians have a deeply rooted presence in Venice dating back to the 6th century , establishing a significant cultural and merchant community. The centre of this community is the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni , granted to Armenian Mekhitarist monks in 1717, which serves as a world-renowned monastery, library, and museum containing over 4,000 Armenian manuscripts. (Google AI overview) We visited the Armenian Island yesterday. What a gem! A beautifully maintained monastery, I think currently 8 monks, and we saw several who said hello. Their church was very bright blue, a bit new to us in Venice. By far the prettiest church. It was originally a leper colony, a disease which is highly contagious and gives rise to hideous deformities of the face and limbs. So infected people were sent to isolated communities, especially to islands. There was the remains of a bricked in archway, were the lepers were able to hear mas...

  As my readers request - more horses: Starting with the Ark At the seafood restaurant for lunch At the Armenian Island Library - mongol? indian? Glass horse Tintoretto horses A famous mercenary, gave church lots of money

In another district of Venice, but next to each other, were two tourist sites. The Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa del Frari (St Francis of Asissi to you and me) and the Scuola Grande de San Rocco - the plague fraternity. Both were all about artists - Titian and Tintoretto respectively. The plague fraternity was by far the more interesting background but I did not appreciate Tintotetto's art much. He was audacious in his bidding for projects, presenting the committee with a finished painting for a ceiling rather than just the drafts; he painted quickly so was very prolific; he spent 20 years painting the two floors of the Scuola for example; and he introduced movement and drama into the art world. I still didn't like his paintings. I did appreciate the wooden carvings beneath the big works, which represented the vices and virtues. This one was curiosity, I think The plague confraternity was formed in the 1400s as a middle-class-level NGO to support the victims of plague, or mo...

  Forgive me for tardy posting. I was falling asleep in the lecture last evening. No more prosecco at lunchtime. I then played ipad games rather than record the day.  Yesterday it rained, which was good to experience. The umbrellas in the one-person-wide passageways, the puddles, the stories of the last 'aqua alta', the high tides of Venice. Kerry, who has been here now 7 times, remembered an aqua alta, when St Marks Square and some streets were flooded. She is our fashion icon. She remembers the galoshes with high heels (really?), and that people also wore above knee galoshes over their normal shoes (believable). Lorenzo was our young Jewish tour guide of the two Shepardic Jewish synagogues - the Levantian and the Spanish ones. The other three non-functioning synagogues were undergoing restoration. A covid project. Which explains why so many buildings are currently under restoration - all started during covid when the tourists could not come to visit.  The word ghetto co...

This is St Mark's Basilica, perhaps the premier building in Venice. This photo was taken at dusk, as we were coming off our vaporetta after island hopping. Tonight we have a private tour of St Mark's Basilica, so that will be very special. It starts at 9pm - so in about 3 hours. This morning we had a two hour tour of the Doge's Palace, that ended exactly at two hours, at the exit. The lovely Fiona - a walking text book - must have done this tour before. There were lots of detail about the meaning of images and colours etc in dozens of paintings. Venice always a woman, usually with a lion at her feet. I'll post some. Nudity warning for children. The first Doge was appointed about 600 AD, and the democratic Republic of Venice continued unbroken until 1797, when Napoleon 'conquered' Venice. The Doge surrendered without a shot being fired, very sensible I think. The French stole some stone lions but left all the architecture and art works intact. It became a French ...

We had our first taste of St Mark's Square as we headed to the private water taxi. At about 8.30am, it was relatively empty; within 10 minutes - relatively crowded.  It was a day on the water - private water taxi to Murano, vaporettos to Burano, then Torcello, back to Burano, back to St Marco. Torcello is the site of the first settlement of Venice in the 5-6th century AD.  Now only 12 people live on the island. The wallet opened, but the church on Torcello did not. This was a major disappointment as in 2012 we went down into the crypts below the church. It was closed for restoration. Parts of the Bascilica were open, and I am afraid that 20m of solid mosaics is no longer as awesome as it once was! The restorations we seem to strike regularly The main wall of mosaics at Torcello Last night I joined three others to find a restaurant, although I only had a scotch and coke. We found an amazing restaurant a block off the Grand Canal, open just 11 months, called Rivoire. It was a si...