The Doge's Palace
We started today’s wander through Venice, mainly through the sestiere of Castelo, by the Doge’s Palace. Being a Sunday morning, it was already very crowded and we immediately felt that our plan to walk towards the eastern side of the city, away from the main tourist areas, was a good one.
We walked the short way along the Riva degli Schiavone to the little bridge from which you can see the famous Bridge of Sighs - the bridge that linked the palace to the prison behind, and is supposed to be named for the sounds made by the prisoners on their way to be tried.
We could not fail to have already noted the horrendous blue advertising hoarding on the east side of the Palace, but we were simply staggered to find that it continued around both sides of the canal. The resulting image is quite surreal.
From here, we headed away from the Riva and visited the campo which contains the marble-fronted church of San Zaccaria. We passed the Scuola di San Giorgio, famous for a series of paintings by Carpaccio, and then headed on to Campo Bandiera e Moro, with a fine palazzo on one side and the church of San Giovanni in Bragora along another.
The church has a late 15th century gothic facade. A plaque on the left of the facade records the fact that Vivaldi was baptised here in 1678.
The final church in this itinerary was San Martino, with its gothic-looking but 19th century facade, which incorporates one of the famous letter boxes in which Venetians could denounce their neighbours for heresy or other sins.
Immediately beyond San Martino you arrive at the Arsenale, the great naval dockyard that was the basis of Venice's maritime power. A great renaissance gateway stands beside the magnificent twin entrance towers (built 1686). Since we were last here, a bridge has been built over the canal that leads into the Arsenale, and it is now at last possible to see in.
The Arsenale remains in military ownership and so far as one can tell the vast area it covers is simply gradually decaying.
We now followed the walls of the Corderie (where hemp ropes were stored) and began to more fully appreciate the scale of the Arsenale.
We emerged in Via Garibaldi. It was built by Napoleon in 1808 by filling in a former canal. It is Venice's widest street.
At the end we passed the house of the explorer Giovani Caboto (better known to English readers as John Cabot), reached the Basino di San Marco and had a nice lunch in the Da Romano restaurant, enjoying the fine views.
After lunch we decided on an impromptu trip to see the Lido, Venice's beach resort island. We caught the vaporetto from the nearby Giadini stop. The views back towards San Giorgio Maggiore on the left and San Marco on the right were exceptional.
Arriving on the Lido a short while later we were staggered to be confronted with the unfamiliar sight of a road with traffic and pedestrians crossing. Shades of Abbey Road!
The beach is on the other side of the wide but shallow island and we advanced along the Gran via Santa Maria Elizabetta and were thrilled to see the extraordinary art nouveau Hotel Ausonia e Hungaria. It dates from 1907. The mosaic facade was created and realized by the Bassanese sculptor Luigi Fabris in 1913.
At the end was the entrance to the public beach via an ugly concrete concourse with a beach cafe and seating area. The beach was, it must be said, pretty uninviting.
Still, it was good to have seen it and to know that we had missed nothing by not having gone before. It did not at live up to the image I had taken from watching Dirk Bogard in Death in Venice.
That was it. We walked back to the vaporetto stop and took a boat back home.
Conditions: sunny, hot
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