Wednesday, June 13, 2007

La Serenissima

I thought I would show you some pictures of Venice. This is our first view of the Grand Canal, as we were approaching the city from the mainland.

Homes on the Grand Canal have been flooded so many times, it appears that many residents have abandoned the first floor and just live upstairs. Note the Moorish design of many of the windows; this Eastern influence in the architecture is seen all over Venice.
St. Mark's. No picture can do it justice. See the bronze horses above the entrance?
This is the view of St. Mark's Square one has when standing next to those horses. The little dots are pigeons, and yuck, they are everywhere. Many tourists buy bags of bird feed to attract them, and the pigeons swarm all over them. This beautiful church is Santa Maria della Salute, as viewed from the Accademia bridge, near our hotel. I hope to see it without the scaffolding some day.
Probably only tourists take long gondola rides, but local people will often use the gondolas to get across the canal quickly. Yes, Venetian passengers often stand.
The area where we stayed, Dorsoduro, is mostly residential and not frequented by tourists, although there are several well-known museums there. Wandering through Dorsoduro, we often passed lovely quiet spots like this.
The Rialto bridge by day...
...and by night! See the prow of our gondola at right?

5 comments:

spookyrach said...

Amazing! I'm loving your photos!

Jody Harrington said...

Great pictures. I love the one near where you stayed. Never been to Venice, and now I want to go!

Unknown said...

I was in Venice with my parents many years ago (1979-ack!), and I agree, you just can't capture it completely in pictures. But yours are lovely and evocative. Thanks for sharing them.

Lori said...

Your pictures look like paintings. They're so pretty!

I wondered about the Grand Canal residents having mold problems like we do here, with their houses flooding.

zorra said...

The Scientist is the photographer, not me. The pictures inside St. Zeno Chapel in Rome were probably the only ones of these that I took; no,I think I took the picture of the dog in Civita. I am glad you've enjoyed them.

PG, I never heard it discussed, but I can't imagine that there would not be problems with mold. Flooding is a way of life there. In the squares in Venice you see stacks of platforms like folding tables, ready to be set up for people to walk on the next time the square floods.