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Venice and Veneto
WHAT TO SEE IN VENICE: TIPS for a great visit
Venice offers a huge wealth of museums, churches, architecture and other sights to see and visit. Here, by district (“sestiere”) are the highlights selected in Blue Guide Venice, the definitive guide to the Most Serene City: 1. SESTIERE OF SAN MARCO Some highlights of the sestiere of San Marco. For much more detail…
The playwright Ferenc Molnár, by his grandson
The latest title in the Blue Danube imprint, which focuses on literature, history and travel in Central Europe, is Venetian Angel, a short novel by Ferenc Molnár, now translated into English for the first time. Molnár was a famous pre-war dramatist whose many plays included one on which the Rodgers…
Venice attempts to stem the tide
(and some news from Rome and Florence) by Alta Macadam The long-discussed entrance restrictions to Venice are finally to become operational on 25th April. The system is designed to limit the numbers of day-trippers, who come to the city for just a few hours (often as part of a tour…
Most rare in marble portraits
The above title is a quote from Giorgio Vasari. They are the words he used, in his famous Lives of the Artists, to describe Alessandro Vittoria (1525–1608), a man who became one of the greatest Italian sculptors of his age. Vittoria was born in Trento, a city in the far…
Blue Guides: Now in colour
Blue Guide Venice (ed. 10) is now in full colour, the first of a new look for the core series. Since 1918, when the first Blue Guide appeared, the books have been through a number of redesigns but the quality of the text remains completely unchanged. The detailed focus on…
Venice in Peril
The UK-based Venice in Peril Fund is one of several international charities devoted to safeguarding the future of this unique city. Guy Elliott, Chairman of Venice in Peril, outlines some of its recent projects. The Venice in Peril Fund was founded in 1971, succeeding an earlier fund instituted in 1966…
The Venetian Empire at Sea
The Venetian Empire, or Stato da mar, depended on a huge number of galleys, galleons and galleasses to protect its trade routes to the east. As Jan Morris has pointed out, ‘in an age when seamen preferred to spend their nights ashore’ the Republic soon set about establishing control of coastal…
The Venetian Republic in times of plague
The Venetian Republic had to take steps to contain infection in the city as early as the 15th century. Their dependence on trade, bringing merchant ships from the East, meant that they were particularly vulnerable to the spread of disease (just as we are told today that globalisation has favoured…
Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits
“Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits” is the title of an exhibition currently running at the National Gallery in London. It has come from the Prado in Madrid, in slightly slimmed-down form. Not all of the works on show in the Prado can be seen in London (the catalogue is teasingly tantalising in…
Fleming and Honour Remembered
Susanna Johnston, John Fleming and Hugh Honour Remembered. Gibson Square, London, 2017. John Fleming and Hugh Honour’s A World History of Art (1982 and later editions, the 7th as recently as 2009) was one of those books one had to have on one’s shelves. My copy, now 30 years old,…
Season’s Greetings
This Advent we’ve chosen twelve different depictions of the Nativity, which we have discovered in the course of Blue Guides research trips around Italy—plus one final one from our latest title in preparation. 1. The ox and the ass and the baby in the manger from an early Christian sarcophagus…
Venice before Easter
Easter always marks the moment in the year in Italy when there are the most visitors: from then the crowds will remain a fixture until midsummer. So a visit to Venice in these first spring days can be all the more rewarding. But at any time of year there are…
Italian Venice: A History
R.J.B Bosworth, Italian Venice: A History, Yale University Press, 2014. R.J.B. Bosworth is addicted to the mingling and competing atmospheres that make up the history of Italian cities. In his book on Rome, Whispering City (reviewed here), he showed how the conflicting pasts of the ‘Eternal City’ were continuously rearranging…
Venice and the Politcs of Washing
W.D. Howells, Venetian Life, first published in 1866, and Polly Coles, The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice, Robert Hale, 2013. A recent review of Polly Coles’ The Politics of Washing claimed that it was the most perceptive book on Venice since W.D. Howells’ Venetian Life. In a field…
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Venice has been one of the world’s leading destinations for the cultural traveller since the 18th-century Grand Tour. View the book’s contents, index and some sample pages, and buy securely from blueguides.com here »
The wonderful Palazzo Grimani, Venice
Tucked away in a quiet nook in the sestiere of Castello is Palazzo Grimani, newly opened to the public, after years of restoration. I arrived late one afternoon, just as dusk was falling. As I climbed the wide stairway to the first floor, the sound of ethereal music floated down to…
Burano in February
As work on the new edition of Blue Guide Venice gets underway, and as I start planning my next trip there, my thoughts turn to the island of Burano. On a sunny day in February—and if we’re lucky there will be some sunny days this month—the colours of Burano’s houses…
In praise of Venice’s water transport system
by Alta Macadam After spending many weeks in Venice preparing the text for a new edition of Blue Guide Venice (out next year), I feel moved to sing the praises of the remarkable transport system run by ACTV in the city and the lagoon. Despite the huge number of passengers involved,…
Venice without the crowds
People often worry that a trip to Venice will be marred by excess numbers of their fellow human beings. True, the city gets very crowded at certain times of year, and yes, there are ever fewer Venetians and ever more wretched carnival mask shops. But overcrowding afflicts only St Mark’s…
