Venezia

Unlike the fairytale land of Venice, the reality is in fact brittle, perpetually rundown, and sinking into the ocean. No cars. No buses. No subway. Its transportation network, made entirely of claustrophobia inducing pedestrian alleyways and constricted canals, is virtually un-navigable with rarely anything resembling a thoroughfare. Case in point, the straight-line distance from our hotel to San Marco is less than one mile, however, the most direct route requires roughly 30 turns to arrive! Add to this the fact that there are almost no vantage points from which you can gain your bearing and you realize Venice is actually a 1,600 year old maze. Also incredibly crowded: Venice is only 7.6 km², yet has a population of roughly 275,000 and is assailed by some 6 million photo snapping tourists per year! That’s like all of Knoxville and Maryville living on UT’s campus with all of the Smokey’s visitors coming to visit. With all these crowds there must be an incredible level of public services right? Wrong. Want to find a trashcan or bathroom? More precious and rare than Venetian glass; you’ll have to hold it, whichever it is. So given all the grittiness and dysfunction of Venice, would I live here? In a heartbeat.

My true take on Venice: Utterly. Amazing. City. Honestly, no other place I have visited gives me any basis for comparison. Venice is really more of a Renaissance theme park than a city. The most amazing aspect of the island is its continuity of style; every bridge, alley, street, and apartment is picturesque. There is nowhere you can turn and not know you are in Venice. The Venetian look has not been achieved in the American sense of city planning; it is really just a hodgepodge unplanned and understated local style thrust together and topped off with the occasional grandiose Byzantine, Roman, Renaissance, or Baroque exclamation point. The Venetian Miracle is really that a sense of continuity prevails through a millennia and a half of chaos.



Quick facts:
Oldest church – San Giacomo di Rialto, built in 427 A.D.
The Basilica San Marco was built in 1094 and is the third church to be built on the site.
The Santa Maria della Salute was built in the mid 1600s, fulfilling a promise to construct a church if God would end the plague which had killed off a third of Venice.