On the last morning in Florence we packed up our stuff,
emptied the fridge, took out the refuse, and were outside the apartment
building waiting for the taxi by 9:00 am.
Our kind proprietor came out to say goodbye, and wish us a pleasant
journey to Venice. The only reason we
were not so sad leaving Florence was because we were embarking on the second
phase of adventures – the Cruise!
The Santa Maria Novella train station is fairly easy to
navigate, and we found our train car without much trouble. Again, our hero G. hoisted all our heavy luggage
into the overhead bins (he might be regretting travelling with three females at
this point), and we settled in for a relaxed trip across the Apennines. Not much to see out the windows, mostly
tunnels through the mountains, until we were out on the open fields of the Po
River valley. The first glimpse of the
Adriatic was soon followed by the sight of our cruise ship moored in the port
of Venice. Whoa, it is massive -- a
floating hotel! We dragged our bags over
the cobblestones to the vaporetti,
the water-taxis, and were soon crossing the water toward the ship at Marittima
Pier.
Travelling on these super-cruisers was a new experience for
me, and I quickly got used to the care and feeding of the cruise ship
staff. Friendly, relaxed, yet with
professionalism and attention to detail, I could see they were highly
experienced in herding 3000+ people onto the huge ship with little trouble. Once we had stowed our stuff in our assigned
cabins, we were free to take the ship’s motor launch service to the main island
of San Marco, to walk around Piazza San Marco, and see the Doges’ Palace, the
Basilica of St Mark, and the famous Campanile.
The traditional (and un-verifiable) date of the founding of
Venice is 25 March 421, by businessmen from the provinces of Istria and Venetia
in NE Italy escaping the Goths who, led by Alaric, had sacked Rome eleven years
before. Yes, fear drove the people to
start a city in a lagoon, safe from the non-seafaring barbarians. At the start
of his brilliant book A History of Venice,
author John Julius Norwich states that Venice, alone of the still-great Italian
cities, was born and matured Greek, and that it has the greatest Byzantine
basilica in the world that is still used for Christian worship. The facts that Venice was an independent
republic for over 1000 years, that its combination of commerce and sea-power
made it great, that it was never conquered by invaders until Napoleon abolished
the republic in 1797, in addition to being one of the most beautiful of cities,
continue to fascinate. I expect to see
signs of Venetian influence in subsequent stops on our cruise, in Croatia,
Greece, and Turkey. Venice had been
“Queen of the Adriatic” and, as an ally of the Eastern Byzantine Empire, its
fingerprints were all over the history of this region.
We reached the Riva
degli Schiavone dock area of the island, took careful note of the times that
the water shuttle would be leaving for the ship, and set off amongst the crowds
of tourists to get a quick look at St Mark’s Square. This area is loaded with vendors’ carts
selling papier-mâché carnival masks, gondolier straw hats, shirts and other
Venetian trinkets, knock-off Prada purses, food, and gondola rides. We crossed
over the Rio di Palazzo and got a view of the Ponte dei Sospiri, the “Bridge of Sighs” that connects the Doges’
Palace prison to the inquisition rooms, the name inspired by the signs of the
condemned prisoners as they get their last glimpse of Venice. The magnificent façade of the Basilica de San
Marco was half-covered with scaffolding, and we were disappointed for our
friend C. who had never been to Venice and would not see the un-obscured façade
on this trip. We did the best we could,
walking around getting photos. I got a nice pic of the Winged Lion of St Mark over the entrance to the Doges' Palace -- the symbol of St Mark is everywhere (see photo). Over the doors to the Basilica an enormous mosaic tells the story of when the city acquired the relics of St Mark, giving the city the prestige of a shrine and destination for pilgrims. I made a
request to my companions to find the statues of the four Tetrarchs, a sculpture
group made of porphyry and, from what I had read, had been built into the walls of St
Mark’s. The Tetrarchs, dating from about the early 4th century AD, represent the two Augusti
and two Caesars from the Latin West Roman Empire and the Greek Eastern Roman Empire (see photo). This lesser-known sculpture was acquired as
war-booty after Venice led the horrible sacking of Constantinople in 1204
during the Fourth Crusade. The famous four
bronze horses now above the main door of the Basilica once dominated the
Hippodrome in Constantinople, and were briefly carried off by the French in
1797, examples of war plundering and re-plundering.
The prominent and still impressive landmark is the
Campanile, a 325-foot bell tower, which soars over the square (see photo). However, this is not the original which stood
for nearly 1000 years. In 1902 it
collapsed, miraculously without loss of life, and was rebuilt. We recognized it as the model of the Daniels
& Fisher Tower in Denver. Since we
were running out of time we could only describe the interior of the Doges’
Palace to C. based on what we could remember from when L., G. and I toured it
two years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment