A visit to historical Venice

I have a new appreciation of tourism. I used to think a tourist was either a voyeur who snooped around other people’s places and gawked or a well-to-do wastrel who flew around the world to luxuriate at seaside resorts.

Now I have a wholly different opinion. Now I understand a tourist can also be someone who’s adventurous and open to new experiences, new surroundings, new cultural practices and new ideas.

The issue of openness is no small matter since there are many home-bodies who genuinely do not want to travel and see the world. They are the ones who tend to fear new perspectives, new people and especially foreigners who don’t look like them, talk like them or behave the way they do. Their worlds tend to be small and static even as we know the world is changing every day.

I recognised the value of open-mindedness recently when I was invited to visit a close relative working in Italy who assured me he’d take me anywhere I wanted to go.

This was a land I’d never seen apart from in my art history books which I used to study voraciously. I’d been especially fond of the Renaissance and vowed that one day, I’d get to Holland and Italy, homes of the Northern and Southern Renaissance respectively.

Now the opportunity was here, and I had no choice but to become what? A tourist. And what a delightful occupation to have for a few days at least.

I was picked up at the Marco Polo Airport in Venice and I marveled at the fact that I was actually in the city filled with canals and gondolas, the kind I’d only seen in Hollywood movies.

I was especially keen to get on a gondola after seeing Woody Allen’s wonderfully romantic musical movie, Everyone Says I Love You which was set in Venice and filled with these beautifully hand-carved boats.

Unfortunately, taking a ride in a gondola cost around four times as much as the waterbus that I eventually took (which would have busted my budget).

Ultra-clean city

But first we had to go to the town nearby where my relative stayed called Vicenze. Little did I know that the 16th century architect Palladio had populated this ultra-clean city with scores of outdoor sculptures and spectacular stone structures, many of which are listed and protected for posterity as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Most were designed by Palladio himself.

That included the amazing Theatre Olympia that he designed in 1580 just before his death. A magnificent stone structure with a beautiful stage that had weathered the centuries well.

Besides the theatre, Vicenze had a score of galleries and museums lining narrow cobblestone streets that compelled the locals to drive tiny cars, a number of which were electric.

When we finally got to Venice, we joined the hordes of fellow tourists heading to the Grand Canal and the gondolas that make this city so picturesque.

Aiming to stretch our cache of costly Euros, we boarded a waterbus rather than the pricey ‘canoe’, since either way, we could see all the palaces bordering the canal which were built during Italy’s imperial heyday by well-to-do merchants, traders and aristocrats related to the Doge, the reigning power.

Dazzling palace

Our destination was St. Mark’s Square where we would find the Doge’s palace and chapel at the far end of the vast Square which itself was filled with flocks of pigeons and people who were tourists like us.

We’d all come to see the dazzling palace that had been built to serve as both the Doge’s residence and seat of government.

Being the height of Italy’s summer holidays, the lines into the chapel (which still holds multiple masses every day) and the palace were long but orderly.

Fortunate to get a small discount for going as a family, we paid our way into what turned out to be a full afternoon of touring vast rooms covered from floor to ceiling in breathtaking beauty.

Mosaic tiles covered nearly all the floors (except the basement prison cells where criminals used to be housed). Meanwhile, the walls of every room were covered in naturalistic Renaissance paintings by renowned artists like Veronese and Tintoretto.

The colourful paintings either depicted tales from Greek mythology or various Doges (equivalent of a Mayor or King) either with their families or members of their senior council.

But what gave me a sore neck by the end of the day were the ceilings which, like the walls, were covered in elaborate portraits of celestial characters either from Christian scriptures or Greek myths.

By the time we’d seen almost all the palace rooms, it was time to go; and although the family was weary, I was ready to be a tourist again, this time heading for Florence, the second city after Venice that I vowed to see in this lifetime.