Santi

A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere.
Frank Stella

Gondoliere

Isn't an enthusiastic gondoliere the best guide?

Red

"Red has more personal associations than any other color. Recognized as a stimulant red is inherently exciting and the amount of red is directly related to the level of energy perceived. Red draws attention and a keen use of red as an accent can immediately focus attention on a particular element."

Under the Bridge

I don't ever wanna feel like I did that day
But take me to the place I love, take me all the way
RHCP

Night ride home

Night Vaporetto on the Grand Canal.

Chalet

On the famous Squero di San Trovaso, open since the 17th century, there is this swiss like wooden chalet in which the workers used to live in the past centuries.

Cheers...

"Sure I am a freeloader but my morals permit that..."

Phoenix

Ask me no more if east or west The Phoenix builds her spicy nest; For unto you at last she flies, And in your fragrant bosom dies.
-Thomas Carew
'A Song'.

Sotoportego

A ramble in Dorsoduro...

Camel

A mighty camel and its driver, both of them coming back from a travel far away in time...

Trattoria

How nice it is to enjoy a beam of sunlight at a table outside a café in this season...

Corte

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.
Frank Gehry

Dogana di Mare

Structural elements that transmit, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below.

Seagull

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that gull’s life is so short and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

Taxi

A taxi ride in the afternoon sun.

Italy

You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
Giuseppe Verdi

Campanile

One of the main landmarks of Venice, the Campanile stands in the heart of the city, in the Piazza, almost in front of the Basilica. The first one was built in the 10th century and was used as a lighthouse as well as a watchtower. It collapsed in 1388, 1489, and in 1511... The last collapse was in 1902. It took ten years to build this one, an almost identical copy of its predecessor.

Out in the Street

When the whistle blows
Girl, I'm down the street
I'm home, I'm out of my work clothes
When I'm out in the street
I walk the way I wanna walk
When I'm out in the street
I talk the way I wanna talk
When I'm out in the street

Pretty girls, they're all passing by
When I'm out in the street
From the corner, we give them the eye
Baby, out in the street I just feel all right
Meet me out in the street, little girl, tonight
Meet me out in the street
Meet me out in the street
Bruce Springsteen - Out in the Street

Mirror

The world upside down in the mirror of a canal...

San Pietro di Castello

San Pietro di Castello is linked to the rest of Castello sestiere by two bridges, one of which is the wooden Ponte di Quintavalle. This small island was one of the first settlements in Venice. Its San Pietro Cathedral (you can see the leaning bell-tower and the dome), built in the 8th Century and rebuilt many times, was Venice's cathedral for centuries, until being replaced by San Marco in 1807 (during the Napoleonic occupation).

Spritz & Co

What will it be for you?

Midnight

Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
The frontier town and citadel of night!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Evening

Cold evening on the Grand Canal.

L'Anconeta

A nice place in Cannaregio to get some rest and have a nice cappuccino and panini. On your way from the Ghetto to Santa Madalena.

From the other side

Another way of seeing things...

A detail you might have overlooked

Venice is full of little details - some even smaller than this. This roundel in bas-relief depicts St Jerome. How do I know? Well, most of his attributes are here - the lion, the skull, the crucifix, and he is holding in his right hand a stone with which he would beat his breast in penance. He is often shown with a cardinal's hat, even though the office of cardinal was not instituted until three centuries after his death. Other missing attributes are a church, symbolising his position as a Doctor of the Church, and an open book, alluding to his translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin.
This door jamb belongs to a church in Dorsoduro.

Memento mori

This sad reminder of the fragility of human life can be found in the Chiesa dei Santi Apostoli in Cannaregio. It is the tombstone of John Smith (1721-1727) the only son of Joseph Smith (1682-1770), British consul in Venice and patron of Canaletto. Smith owned the Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, which is very near to the church.
Notice that the word for 'died' is 'denatus' - unborn - rather than the more usual 'obiit'.

Heralds don't pun; they cant.

You can find this coat of arms over a door in Dorsoduro. The name of the family that gave its name to the palazzo is very similar to the Italian word for the crustacean that appears on the shield. The use of pictures for words is called a rebus. In heraldry, coats of arms employing a rebus to make a visual reference to the surname of the armiger are called canting arms. The civic number of the palazzo used to be 1123; many houses in Venice bear traces of older numbers. I don't know when the houses were renumbered, but it must have been quite a while ago. The numbering of houses is confusing enough now - imagine what it must have been like during the changeover period!

Is this the narrowest street in Venice?

No, it's not. I've never seen it mentioned in any of my books on Venice, but it is very narrow. I have measured it; it is 26½” (67.3 cm) wide at chest height, 22½” (57.2 cm) at head height, at the entrance and it narrows to 25” (63.5 cm) at chest height half way along. The narrowest street in Venice is Calle Varisco (Cannaregio), which is 20.5" (52 cm) wide at shoulder height. This must be the narrowest street in San Polo.
It is difficult to give a definite figure because in so many of the streets the walls are not vertical and they tend to get narrower the higher you go.

A counting game

You can find this house in Santa Croce. What I want to know is how many faces can you see in this photo?
Here's my answer - I could be wrong - in white
Under the eaves: 29
The figure over the top central window: 1
At the corners of each balcony: 4
On the top of each arched window: 6
Making a total of: 40!

A bit of excitement

I was crossing the Grand Canal - the Canalazzo, as it's called by Venetians and show-offs - in a traghetto, when I heard the siren. My reactions were slow - my camera was not even switched on, something I never had to worry about when I took photos on film - and I thought, by the time it's ready and focussed, the ambulance will be out of sight. But I managed to get this and another 9 seconds later.
Of course I was standing up!

A heart of stone

I realised a bit late that I should have done something with a Valentine's Day connection, so I'm making two posts today. You can read the story behind the red heart-shaped stone in the photo here: http://www.venessia.com/leggenderaccolta1.htm. You'll need to scroll down almost to the bottom of the page to read the story of Orio and Melusina. There's an English translation a bit further down.
A shame about the graffiti, isn't it? You want to know where it is? As the story says, it's near the Bragora - a campo with an alternative name - and there is a clerical connection.

The problem with acqua alta

The gondolier has instructed his passengers to lean over to the starboard side as much as possible so that the ferro di prua or delfin is a low as possible in order to get under this bridge at a time of acqua alta. This photo was taken in October 2010, not a time of year when the acqua is usually very alta.
The bridge is one of two very similar bridges almost side by side. They say that the devil is in the detail, so you'll need to know your bridges very well or find it on veniceconnected to say which one this is with certainty. It will help you to know that both bridges are in Castello.