Venice I
At long last, my struggle with the hotel's wi fi let me upload some of my Venice pictures. Venice brings out poetry in everyone, so have a quote fron Byron (who lived there for a considerable while: She looks a sea Cybele, fresh fro ocean,/ Rising with her tiara of proud towers/At airy distance, with majestic motion...
The square of squares, or should we say, the piazza to end all piazzas, being a case in point.
Have a closer look at St.Marco's. Which is Venice at its most Byzantine, not surprising considering they sacked their rival across the sea a couple of times:
Inside, one isn't allowed to take photos, but I was covered by a swarm of Japanese tourists who all did so anyway and used their bad example as a hasty excuse:
This now that's the view to and from the bay at St Marco's and the Palazzo Ducale. You can see the two emblems of Venice on the columns: the winged lion for St. Mark and the man with a crocodile (not a dragon!), who is the original patron saint of Venice, St. Theodore. Poor Theo got ditched in favour of Mark the apostle when the city started to get aspirations. And stole the supposed relics of Mark. Err, rescued them.
And speaking of the sea:
The bridge of sighs, a palace and a prison on each hand, as Byron described the view, which caused the pedantic Wordsworth to complain Byron should have written "a prison on one hand and a palace on the other", only for an even more pedantic literature professor to correct Wordsworth and argue that Byron was in fact strictly accuratem since the Doge's palace also incorporated prisons, the Piombi (where Casanova escaped from) and the Pozzi, while the prison-building itself was also a palace, containing also the residence of the prison governor:
On to Shakespeare. What news on the Rialto?
The Canale Grande:
The Ca d'Oro:
Carlo "Greatest Venetian playwright" Goldoni's birthplace, which today is a museum worth visiting if you're a) interested in the theatre, or b) want to see the interior of a 18th century citizen's house, complete with period furniture which alas was not allowed to be photographed:
And that's all for today. I'm off to Bologna tomorrow, hoping for better wi fi there in order to upload the gazillion other photos of Venice I made. Cross your fingers for me!
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/780749.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
The square of squares, or should we say, the piazza to end all piazzas, being a case in point.
Have a closer look at St.Marco's. Which is Venice at its most Byzantine, not surprising considering they sacked their rival across the sea a couple of times:
Inside, one isn't allowed to take photos, but I was covered by a swarm of Japanese tourists who all did so anyway and used their bad example as a hasty excuse:
This now that's the view to and from the bay at St Marco's and the Palazzo Ducale. You can see the two emblems of Venice on the columns: the winged lion for St. Mark and the man with a crocodile (not a dragon!), who is the original patron saint of Venice, St. Theodore. Poor Theo got ditched in favour of Mark the apostle when the city started to get aspirations. And stole the supposed relics of Mark. Err, rescued them.
And speaking of the sea:
The bridge of sighs, a palace and a prison on each hand, as Byron described the view, which caused the pedantic Wordsworth to complain Byron should have written "a prison on one hand and a palace on the other", only for an even more pedantic literature professor to correct Wordsworth and argue that Byron was in fact strictly accuratem since the Doge's palace also incorporated prisons, the Piombi (where Casanova escaped from) and the Pozzi, while the prison-building itself was also a palace, containing also the residence of the prison governor:
On to Shakespeare. What news on the Rialto?
The Canale Grande:
The Ca d'Oro:
Carlo "Greatest Venetian playwright" Goldoni's birthplace, which today is a museum worth visiting if you're a) interested in the theatre, or b) want to see the interior of a 18th century citizen's house, complete with period furniture which alas was not allowed to be photographed:
And that's all for today. I'm off to Bologna tomorrow, hoping for better wi fi there in order to upload the gazillion other photos of Venice I made. Cross your fingers for me!
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/780749.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.