Many of you have already visited Venice and formed your own opinion regarding its merits as a tourist destination. I suspect that some of you will agree with my assessment... Venice offers the best and the most mundane of experiences for us tourists.
Let's start with the negatives. Some 50,000 people tour Venice each day... add another 270,000 for the locals and spread the total over only 400 square kilometres... you are sure to bump into a couple of people in a day's wanderings. If you don't like crowds, Venice will be something of a challenge. My guess is that Venice can boast at least 1,500 shops that are prepared to serve you up a cup of coffee... 500 shops that can fit you out with a nice handbag... and that is not counting the illegal traders who vanish into thin air each time a policeman walks his beat... 250 shops that can dress you in a Venician mask... ready for the big night out. There are 12 major tourist sites... the 'must' sees. Now you put the dynamics of these circumstances together. Each tourist to Venice joins a perpetual queue down the narrow alleys... up and over the arched bridges... going from one site to the next. The speed of the queue is determined by the slowest walker... there is no use rushing... I have tried that tactic a number of times... the geriatrics win in the end. So you amuse yourself by looking in the shop windows... at the coffee shops and the handbags. The merchants exploit your lack of options. You may not need a handbag... but after a couple of hours without mental stimulation... your brain starts to believe it really does need another handbag. Now for the conspiracy... all the merchants conspire by displaying outrageous prices... coffee at $8.50 for what I assess to be 1/3rd of a cup... handbags at thousands of dollars. Repetition makes your brain accept the outrageous as the normal. Suddenly you see a price that is at the lower end of the outrageous spectrum... what a bargain... you ponder how much money you have saved by not paying the high end of the outrageous spectrum... you fall into the tourists trap.
When planning your trip to Venice factor in the fact that half of your time on the island will be spent playing mind-games with the merchants... and also factor in the fact that you are going to lose .
Enough of being a kill-joy. Venice also offers the best. This morning we toured the Dorge Palace... the centre of power when the Venician empire ruled Europe. Like other ancient empires, Venicians were not shy of pulling in the profits... however, the Venicians shared the spoils amongst so few citizens. Evidence of such wealth can be seen in the number of ancient churches decorated with statues and mosaics where cost was not an issue. The Dorge Palace is the pinnacle of such opulence. Like most ancient buildings, fires and other calamities have caused parts of it to be renovated continuously over the ages. But Venice was wealthy for so long, that each renovation resulted in a more lavish palace. As it exists today, the private living quarters of the Dorge family were not the most impressive rooms of the palace... it was the rooms used for government... the general assembly... the council of 100 (numbers varied over the years)... and the room for the council of ten... where the real power was exercised. In their day, these were the largest rooms in the world... 50 meters of span without supporting columns. Engineering aside, the decoration of all rooms is superb... the best artists of the day concentrated on Venice and experimented and competed with each other to make Venician art much more advanced than any other nation.
Venice has the Dorge Palace... but many would argue it is not the jewel in the crown. St. Mark's Cathedral started as the private church of the Dorge... but grew to be so dominant in Italy that it claimed leadership over the church of Rome (a claim that was not recognised).
In conclusion, of course you must have Venice on your international travel itinerary... but be prepared to invest some of your time coping with the thousands of other tourists with the same itinerary.
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