Venice and the Veneto

Called the acqua alta, the winter flooding of Venice is caused by a combination of seasonal tides, fluctuations in atmospheric pressure in the Adriatic and persistent southeasterly winds, and has always been a feature of Venetian life. In recent years, however, it has been getting worse, with more than a hundred floods a year – though most of these are minor. If the siren sounds, you can expect a serious flood in three to four hours’ time. A system of plank walkways is immediately set up in the low-lying parts of the city – most boat stops have maps of where those walkways run. The usual high-tide season is September to April, with the worst flooding between November and February.

A grand plan is being implemented to protect the city, involving building a tidal barrier across the three entrances to the lagoon. Nicknamed Moisè (Moses), the barrier aroused considerable opposition, both to its cost and to its potential environmental impact. However, mounting concern about global warming gave the matter more urgency and has led to widespread acceptance. More than twenty years after the first plan was submitted, work finally began on the barrier in 2003 and is due to be completed in 2014.

Below is a selection of the most impressive buildings to be seen on the Canal Grande. To see both banks at once, make sure you get a seat at the front or the back of the vaporetto; and don’t miss the experience of a nocturnal boat ride.

1. Calatrava Bridge

The newest feature of Venice’s cityscape is officially known as the Ponte della Costituzione, but Venetians generally use the name of its designer, Santiago Calatrava. The elegant arc of steel, stone and glass is modelled on a gondola’s hull.

2. Scalzi Bridge

The successor of an iron structure put up by the Austrians in 1858–60, which had to be replaced in the early 1930s to give the new steamboats sufficient clearance.

3. Fondaco dei Turchi

A private house from the early thirteenth century until 1621, the Fondaco dei Turchi was then turned over to Turkish traders, who stayed here until 1838. Though over-restored, the building’s towers and arcade give a reasonably precise picture of what a Veneto-Byzantine palace would have looked like. It’s now the natural history museum.

4. Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi

Begun by Mauro Codussi at the very end of the fifteenth century, this was the first Venetian palace built on Renaissance lines. The palazzo’s most famous resident was Richard Wagner, who died here in February 1883. It’s now the casino.

5. Ca’ Pésaro

The thickly ornamented Ca’ Pésaro, bristling with diamond-shaped spikes and grotesque heads, took half a century to build – work finished in 1703, long after the death of the architect, Baldassare Longhena.

6. Palazzo Corner della Regina

This palazzo was built in 1724 on the site of the home of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, from whom the palace takes its name.

7. Ca’ d’Oro

Incorporating fragments of a thirteenth-century palace that once stood on the site, the gorgeous Ca’ d’Oro was built in the 1420s and 30s, and acquired its nickname – “The Golden House” – from the gilding that used to accentuate its carving.

8. Ca’ da Mosto

The arches of the first storey of the Ca’ da Mosto and the carved panels above them are remnants of a thirteenth-century Veneto-Byzantine building, and are thus among the oldest structures on the canal.

9. Rialto market

 

10. Fondaco dei Tedeschi

The fondaco was once headquarters of the city’s German merchants, who as early as 1228 were leasing a building here. In 1505 the Fondaco burned down; Giorgione and Titian were commissioned to paint the exterior of its replacement. The remnants of their contribution are now in the Ca’ d’Oro.

11. Rialto Bridge

 

12. Palazzo Loredan and Palazzo Farsetti

These neighbouring palazzi are heavily restored Veneto-Byzantine palaces of the thirteenth century; now the town hall.

13. Palazzo Grimani

Work began on the immense Palazzo Grimani in 1559, to designs by Sanmicheli, but was not completed until 1575, sixteen years after his death.

14. The Mocenigo palaces

Four houses that once belonged to the Mocenigo family stand side by side on the Canal Grande’s sharpest turn: the Palazzo Mocenigo-Nero, a late sixteenth-century building, once home to Byron; the double Palazzo Mocenigo, built in the eighteenth century; and the Palazzo Mocenigo Vecchio, a Gothic palace remodelled in the seventeenth century.

15. Ca’ Fóscari

The largest private house in Venice at the time of its construction (c.1435), Ca’ Fóscari was the home of Doge Francesco Fóscari, whose extraordinarily long term of office (34 years) came to an end with his forced resignation.

16. The Palazzi Giustinian

These twinned palaces were built in the mid-fifteenth century for two brothers who wanted attached but self-contained houses.

17. Ca’ Rezzonico

Longhena’s gargantuan Ca’ Rezzonico was begun in 1667 as a commission from the Bon family, but they were obliged to sell the still unfinished palace to the Rezzonico, a family of stupendously wealthy Genoese bankers. Among its subsequent owners was Pen Browning, whose father Robert died here in 1889.

18. Palazzo Grassi

This vast palazzo was built in 1748–72 by Massari, and was the last great house to be raised on the Canal Grande.

19. Accademia Bridge

As the larger vaporetti couldn’t get under the iron Ponte dell’Accademia built by the Austrians in 1854, it was replaced in 1932 by a wooden structure, later reinforced with steel.

20. Palazzo Venier dei Leoni

In 1759 the Venier family, one of Venice’s richest dynasties, began rebuilding their home, but this palazzo, which would have been the largest palace on the canal, never progressed further than the first storey. The stump of the building is occupied by the Guggenheim Collection.

21. Palazzo Dario

This exquisite little palazzo was built in the late 1480s, and the multicoloured marbles of the facade are characteristic of the work of the Lombardo family.

22. Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Grande

The palace that used to stand here was destroyed when a fire lit to dry out a stock of sugar ran out of control. Sansovino’s design – built from 1545 – is notable for its rugged lower-storey stonework, which makes it the prototype for the Ca’ Pésaro and Ca’ Rezzonico.

Venice specializes in fish and seafood, together with exotic ingredients like pomegranates, pine nuts and raisins, harking back to its days as a port and merchant city. The surrounding Veneto vies with Lombardy for the risotto-making crown – the end product tending to be more liquid than those to the west, usually with a seafood base although peas (bisi in the local dialect) are also common, as are other seasonal vegetables including spinach, asparagus and pumpkin. The red salad-leaf radicchio also has its home in the Veneto, as does the renowned Italian dessert, tiramisù. Polenta is eaten, too, while pork in all forms features strongly, together with heavy soups of beans, rice and root vegetables.

Pastries and sweets are also an area of Venetian expertise. Look out for the thin oval biscuits called baicoli, the ring-shaped cinnamon-flavoured bussolai (a speciality of the Venetian island of Burano) and mandorlato, a cross between nougat and toffee, made with almonds.

The Veneto has been very successful at developing wines with French and German grape varieties, notably Merlot, Cabernet, Pinot Bianco, Pinot Grigio, Müller-Thurgau, Riesling, Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer. The quintessentially Italian Bardolino, Valpolicella and Soave are all from the Verona area and, like so many Italian wines, taste better near their region of origin. This is also true of Prosecco, a light champagne-like wine from the area around Conegliano. Grappa, the local firewater, is associated particularly with the upland town of Bassano di Grappa, where every alimentari stocks a dozen varieties. Made from grape husks, juniper berries or plums, grappa is very much an acquired taste.

The 121 islands of central Venice are divided into six districts known as sestieri, and the houses within each sestiere are numbered in a sequence that makes sense solely to the functionaries of the post office – this explains how buildings facing each other across an alleyway can have numbers that are separated by hundreds.

Venice’s main thoroughfare, the Canal Grande, divides the city in half – three sestieri to the west and three to the east. On the east side of the Canal Grande is the sestiere of San Marco, the area where the majority of the essential sights are clustered, and accordingly the most expensive and most crowded district of the city. East of San Marco is Castello, and to the north is Cannaregio – both of which become more residential, and quieter, the further you get from the centre. On the other side of the Canal Grande, the largest of the sestieri is Dorsoduro, stretching from the fashionable quarter at the southern tip of the canal to the docks in the west. Santa Croce, named after a now-demolished church, roughly follows the curve of the Canal Grande from Piazzale Roma to a point just short of the Rialto, where it joins the smartest and commercially most active of the districts on this bank – San Polo.

Carnevale

Venice’s Carnevale (w carnivalofvenice.com) occupies the ten days leading up to Lent, finishing on Shrove Tuesday with a masked ball for the glitterati and dancing in the Piazza for the plebs. After falling out of fashion for many years, it was revived in 1979 and is now supported by the city authorities who organize various pageants and performances, beginning with the “Flight of the Angel” from the Campanile. Apart from these events, Carnevale is an endless parade: during the day people don costumes and go to the Piazza to be photographed, while business types do their shopping in the classic white mask, black cloak and tricorn hat. In the evening some congregate in the remoter squares, while those who have spent hundreds of pounds on their costumes install themselves in the windows of Florian and pose. Masks are on sale throughout the year, but special mask and costume shops magically appear during Carnevale, and Campo San Maurizio sprouts a marquee with mask-making demonstrations and a variety of designs for sale.

La Sensa and the Vogalonga

From the twelfth century until the fall of the Republic, Ascension Day was marked by the ceremony of The Marriage of Venice to the Sea, a ritual which was followed by a huge trade-fair called the Fiera della Sensa (Sensa being dialect for Ascension). Today the feast of La Sensa happens on the Sunday after Ascension Day, and features a feeble modern version of the ceremony, plus a gondola regatta. Far more spectacular is the Vogalonga or “long row”, held a week later. Established in 1974, the Vogalonga is open to any crew in any class of rowing boat, and covers a 32km course from the Bacino di San Marco out to Burano and back, with the competitors setting off from in front of the Palazzo Ducale around 9am.

The Biennale

The Venice Biennale (w labiennale.org), set up in 1895 as a showpiece for international contemporary art, is held from June to November of every odd-numbered year. Its permanent site in the Giardini Pubblici has pavilions for about forty countries (the largest for Italy’s representatives), plus a thematic international exhibition. Supplementing this central part are events at venues all over the city: the salt warehouses on the Záttere, for instance, or the Corderie in the Arsenale. In even-numbered years the city hosts an architecture Biennale, a smaller-scale event which usually runs from September to November; this overlaps with a short music Biennale, and is preceded by a two-week dance Biennale (usually in June).

The Film Festival

The Venice Film Festival (w labiennale.org) – the world’s oldest, founded in 1932 – takes place on the Lido every year in late August and/or early September. Tickets are available to the general public on the day before the performance, at the Palazzo del Cinemà and PalaBiennale ticket offices. Any remaining tickets are sold off at PalaGalileo one hour before the screening, but nearly all seats are taken well before then.

The Regata Storica

Held on the first Sunday in September, the Regata Storica is the annual trial of strength and skill for the city’s gondoliers and other expert rowers. It starts with a procession of historic craft along the Canal Grande course, their crews all decked out in period dress, followed by a series of races up the canal. The opening parade is a spectacular affair, and is followed by a race for young rowers in two-oared pupparini; the women come next (in boats called mascarete), followed by a race for canoe-like caorline; and then it’s the men’s race, in specialized two-man racing gondolas called gondolini.

La Festa del Redentore

For Venetians it’s not Carnevale that’s Venice’s quintessential festival – it’s the Festa del Redentore, which marks the end of the plague of 1576. Celebrated on the third Sunday in July and the preceding Saturday, the festa is centred on Palladio’s church of the Redentore, which was built in thanksgiving for the city’s deliverance from that terrible epidemic. On the Saturday the bishop of Venice marks the commencement of the festive weekend by leading a procession to the church, crossing the Giudecca canal on a bridge that’s supported by dozens of boats that are strung across the waterway from the Záttere. By the evening the Bacino di San Marco is clogged with boats, as people row out for a picnic on the lagoon, then at midnight there’s the mother of all firework displays, after which it’s traditional to row to the Lido for the sunrise.

La Festa della Salute

Named after the church of the Salute, the Festa della Salute is a reminder of the plague of 1630–31, which killed one third of the city’s population. The church was built after the outbreak, and every November 21 people process to it over a pontoon bridge across the Canal Grande, to give thanks for good health, or to pray for it.