Venice

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It is a hard book to categorise. It is not a history of Venice, though it does trace out much of its history. It is not a guide book, at least not in a practical sense as you could not use it to guide yourself around Venice. It might be more thought about as a reflection on Venice, or perhaps if you have never been, a preparation for it. It is organised into a whole host of themes, which I suppose make some sort of sense. Before we get to the books you’ve recommended, what do you feel someone visiting Venice needs to know about the city and what drives it? Is it the phrase that comes up in your book, ‘ com’era dov’era’? But he was a marvelous painter and an amazing thinker. His ideas were behind the Natural History Museum in Oxford being built, and the O’Shea brothers carving those extraordinary capitals. Someone would bring a plant from the botanical gardens in the morning, and these Irish masons would carve that plant into the building. A lot of those ideas about the Gothic, Ruskin cuts in Venice. He spends a lot of time drawing and measuring. He’s very careful, trying to tabulate the world. He has a lot of ideas about when arches became Byzantine, and when they became Romanesque. He is quite often quite wrong. But the idea is a powerful one, that Venice, as a Gothic city, is an act for good.

Venice by Jan Morris | Waterstones

It is a pleasant enough read, but its main fault for me is that Morris wants to seem to tell you everything about every aspect of Venice. So for instance, in the section on the secondary forgotten attractions of Venice, rather than describe one or two examples she lists lots and lots of them, and you get lost under the sheer quantity of facts and information. I felt less facts, and more about the mood, might have been better. At times I wanted to skim over the parts when she lists lots of examples.Another very good book I read was about two men who want to be members of the Venetian aristocracy, Venice’s Intimate Empire by Erin Maglaque. There was a book called the Libro D’Oro, which listed the nobility. After the serrata in 1297, no one could rise to join Venice’s Grand Council anymore. One of these men is the illegitimate son of a noble family, whose family are trying to get him legitimacy so he’s on the list. The other is a tradesman’s son, who is almost rich enough to get onto the list. One ends up being the governor of Candia, which is Crete, and the other is the governor of another town on the mainland, in Istria. The tradesman marries a local princess, and consequently does get elevated. The other one marries a servant girl who he loves, which makes it even harder for him.

libreria Acqua alta - Tripadvisor libreria Acqua alta - Tripadvisor

That’s an awfully good phrase to hang it on, in that I don’t think there is another city that has remained as much as it was, say, 150 years ago. That’s unusual and it’s because of the extraordinary topography in that Venice has no suburbs. Almost every other city of any importance or size that one knows has a centro storico and then either there’s a downtown, or there are suburbs that dilute. I was trying to help people find…a Venice that’s as unaffected by change as one could hope to find.” I like mysteries so I’ve read quite a few of Donna Leon’s books over the years, just because there are so many of them. When I was reading your travel guide to Venice and you mentioned the name of a place, I kept going, ‘Oh, yes, I know that name. Brunetti is always walking along there.’ Let’s turn to the history book you’ve chosen. This is Italian Venice: A History by Richard Bosworth, who is a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. This is about modern Venice, I believe, after the fall of the Republic in 1797.

What about the Venetian artists, Mantegna, Tiziano, Giorgione etc. is there a lot to see of their work in Venice? Abelard's Love - I associate Abelard and Heloise with medieval France. Did he spend time in Venice? Does this book? The Grand Canal ... follows the course of a river known to the ancients as Rivo Alto - the origin of the Rialto." (The City: 11) The absolute other end of paintings to go and see would be the Carpaccios in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, which is behind San Marco. They’re almost genre pictures because they are pictures of Venice as it was in 1500. There is this extraordinary, overriding oddity about Venice, which is that because it’s so unchanged whether it’s in Carpaccio or Bellini, Guardi or Canaletto, you’re looking at paintings with a costumed cast that could be you. That’s such an exciting thing. Obviously, things change a bit: the gondolas used to have covers, now they don’t. But, in general, many views, whether medieval or later, are recognizably unchanged. My mum and I were so excited to go to this bookshop, only to be massively disappointed. The interior was lovely, don’t get me wrong, however considering this bookshop is famous for its cats - there was not a cat in sight, which I also don’t mind as I have worked in animal care and fully understand that they won’t want to be in the building all the time.

The best books on Venice - Five Books

Let’s move on to The Architectural History of Venice by Deborah Howard, which seems to go right from the beginning, the founding of Venice. No wonder there were no cats. They would’ve hated to be in there. No personal space whatsoever. Very rude staff too, rushing people through the shop.Venice once ruled an empire that stretched across the eastern Mediterranean, but by the early modern period was already evolving into a city whose greatest claim to fame was as a tourist destination. Here Matthew Rice, author and illustrator of Venice: A Sketchbook Guide, recommends books to read about Venice and its history and architecture, as well as a couple of crime thrillers to read while you're there. Entertaining, ironical, witty, high spirited and appreciative . . . Both melancholy and gay and worldly, I think of it now as among the best books on Venice; indeed as the best modern book about a city that I have ever read.' Geoffrey Grigson Room availability – Where we have less than X rooms available we may display a message near the room type. The statement is based on rooms available at that price. Price and availability of rooms can change at any time. We occasionally add extra rooms on sale at a later time/date if we can secure those from the accommodation provider.

Judith Mackrell Recommends the Best Venetian Reads - Waterstones Judith Mackrell Recommends the Best Venetian Reads - Waterstones

Perhaps the best way to navigate the Grand Canal is to take the 40-minute Line 1 vaporetto ride from Piazzale Roma to San Zaccaria. The magnificent palazzos lining the canal showcase the wealth of families during the height of the Venetian Republic, from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Don’t want to splash out on a gondola ride? You can have a similar (though less private) experience and cross the canal for just a few euros on a traghetto gondola ferry. Other Venetian waterways ... have an average width of twelve feet, and the average depth of a fair-sized family bath-tub." (The City: 12) It is a most erudite, solid and full guide to the buildings of Venice. If you are more interested in buildings than my book tells you, it’s the one to go for. She has all the facts. We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. On Venice holidays you can spend days just swooning over its ornate bridges, elegant archways and gilded domes. Romance is just about everywhere you look, from its pretty squares and canals to its beautiful art collections. A real visual feast, just wandering and taking in the sensational architecture of the Rialto Bridge, St Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace and the vistas of the Grand Canal, is a wonderful experience.

Absolutely. It’s dark and numinous and glittering and oriental. Even Ruskin, who loved it more than his mother, hates the cresting that goes around it. He’s full of frightful fury about various people’s work to it. But it’s right up there with Hagia Sophia as one of the great Byzantine, early Christian buildings. The earliest of all state banks, the Banca Giro, was opened on the Rialto in the twelfth century." (The City: 19) One bishop playing a double game with such conspicuous ineptitude that he was simultaneously excommunicated both by the Pope and by the Oecumenical Patriarch." (The People: 9) This was my favorite neighborhood. Cross the Accademia bridge and just stroll among very clean streets full of art galleries, shops and restaurants. This place felt more like a weird museum than a bookstore. Once you enter the store, you feel as if you're on a train and you can't get off and actually enjoy the thousands upon thousands of books that surround you. Instead, propelled by the staff asking you to move along and the people behind you expecting you to walk faster, you end up walking through the store in a sort of pre-planned path, only to end up at the exit without having looked at a single book.