View from the lagoon, Part 2

By Robert Veel, Limelight Arts Travel director

Think you’ve seen all possible sides of Venice? Think again! In the 1,000 years of Venice’s proud history as a maritime empire, it has been a centre for the trade, governance, music, art, languages and even cuisine of the multicultural population that made it one of the largest cities of the pre-modern world. Robert Veel picks up where he left off in his reconsideration of Venice from the perspective of its lagoon, in this second article.

A MULTICULTURAL LAGOON

One of the many ways in which Venice stood out among medieval and Renaissance cities was the number and variety of foreigners who could be seen around the city. Diplomatic reports and travellers’ accounts of Venice consistently remark on how exotic the place feels. Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, Turks, Germans, French and Flemish communities all left their mark on the city, as the names of Venetian churches, palaces and streets attest. Italian communities from Florence, Milan, Lucca and other important cities were present in significant numbers. A Jewish presence was also palpable, drawn from Sephardic, Levantine, Italian and Ashkenazy groups. Venice managed the presence of these communities in the city remarkably well. Foreigners were given equality before the law, but kept separate from Venetian society through a range of regulations and physical limitations on movement.

A visit to the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, just off the Lido near the mouth of the lagoon, puts you face to face with Venice’s multicultural past. In 1717 the Venetian Republic granted asylum to a community of Armenian Christian monks, led by one Mekhitar. Obedient to Rome, Mekhitar and his followers were persecuted by both the Ottoman Turks, who had conquered Armenia centuries before, and by the Armenian Orthodox majority. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the island had been a leper colony, then later abandoned. (The island’s name, St Lazarus, is a mashed-up reference to Jesus’s healing of a leper and raising Lazarus from the dead.)

The monks expanded the size of the island fourfold, allowing them to farm crops and raise stock. Over time the island became a great centre of Armenian scholarship, preserving invaluable manuscripts in its library and disseminating knowledge of Armenia through its multilingual printing press. The English poet Lord Byron spent significant time at the monastery during his stay in Venice, even compiling an English-Armenian dictionary.

To visit San Lazzaro you need to phone in advance and book yourself on an English-language tour. The tours are timed to coincide with the arrival and departure of the number 20 vaporetto from San Zaccaria, near St Mark’s. Find out more here.

INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND

Perhaps thanks to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the economic history of Venice city has been characterised through its mercantile activities – the buying and selling of goods, their efficient movement through the port and then throughout Europe. But Venice was also a great centre of manufacturing, producing the highest quality glass, soap, ships, silk cloth and printed books, among many other things. Today this tradition continues in the surrounding Veneto region, which has made itself one of Italy’s wealthiest thanks to a high concentration of high quality, highly engineered industrial products.

If you look beyond the palaces of the Grand Canal and the magnificent churches, you’ll very quickly see the remnants of Venice’s former industrial might. The medieval Arsenal, which centuries ago employed 10,000 workers, is the most obvious example, but the island of the Giudecca, across the canal of the same name, is a great place to stroll and survey a former industrial powerhouse. Take the number 2 vaporetto from either San Zaccaria or the railway station to either the Palanca or Redentore stop. From here you should make your way down one of the laneways running parallel to the canal, until you get to the lagoon side of the Giudecca. You’ll be surprised by the number of shipyards and other small manufacturing plants still managing to survive. The ones that haven’t have often been converted to elegant lofts or artists’ workshops. And you can finish your stroll in style with a drink on the rooftop of the Hilton Hotel, located in the Molino Stucky, a vast nineteenth-century flour mill (and later pasta factory) on the water’s edge.

FIN-DE-SIÈCLE STYLE

Written in 1911 after a summer holiday, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice epitomises the period of early modernity in Venice, before the outbreak of World War I changed Europe forever. Much of the novella is set in and around the Grand Hotel des Bains on Venice’s Lido, the strip of sand which separates the Venetian lagoon from the Adriatic. Some Venetians – and visitors – do not consider the Lido to be the ‘real’ Venice, yet an off-season stroll around the Lido is one of the best ways to become acquainted with a distinctive period in Venice’s history.

The railway arrived in Venice in 1846, thanks to the efforts of the Austro-Hungarian empire to modernise the region it had acquired from Napoleon a few decades earlier. With the railway came middle-class travellers, seeking different experiences from the aristocratic travellers of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour. Coming from landlocked countries in northern Europe, and landlocked centres of northern Italy, many had a summer dip in the Adriatic at the top of their list, and so the idea of the beach holiday was born on the Lido. (Indeed the toponym ‘lido’ has been copied endlessly at beach resorts around the world.)

Most nineteenth-century travellers headed for the grand hotels that sprang up along the beachfront, but the wealthier could afford a private villa. Stretching from the ferry landing at Piazza Santa Maria Elisabetta to the Adriatic, the ‘Gran Viale’ and its side streets soon hosted a concentration of hotels and private homes, built in the latest Art Nouveau style – or ‘Stile Liberty’ as the Italians call it.

One may not think of Venice, or even Italy, as being a great centre of this modern style, but a short walk around the Lido will soon change one’s perceptions. Alighting from the ferry, head down the Gran Viale and past the curvaceous, asymmetric Ausonia Hungaria hotel, exuberantly tiled and recently restored. Turn right after Ausonia and stroll along Via Doge Michiel or Via Enrico Dandolo, both running parallel to the Gran Viale. Here you will find an eclectic mix of villas and small hotels, consistently in the Art Nouveau style but with an eccentric range of historical and regional references – including to Renaissance Italian villas, medieval castles and even Alpine timber houses, an odd choice for a beach house!

Death in Venice devotees should also head down to the Gran Hotel des Bains at the Adriatic end of the Gran Viale, though it’s sadly fenced off and decrepit, awaiting an investor who can restore it to its former glory. And fans of the red carpet might want to venture a few kilometres south along the beachfront to the luxurious Moorish Revival-style Excelsior Hotel. Strictly speaking, it’s not Art Nouveau, but it is nevertheless undeniably redolent of the epoch. It’s here that the annual Venice Film Festival takes place. Stars arrive and leave by water taxi at the private landing on the land-side of the hotel. Before climbing back aboard a vaporetto to central Venice, stop for a refreshment with a view at the Villa Laguna, a Habsburg-era mansion that today is a small hotel.

A HAVEN FOR THE ARTS

In August 1949 Giorgio Cini, 31-year-old scion of a wealthy industrial family from Ferrara, lost his life in an air crash over Cannes. His devastated father, Vittorio, hitherto a prominent entrepreneur and politician, withdrew completely from public life. In 1951 he created the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the island of San Giorgio in his adopted city of Venice, in order to commemorate his son and help restore the city after the loss and devastation of World War II.

Vittorio Cini was the right person at the right time. It may seem remarkable to us today that the Cini Foundation was granted a concession to much of the island of San Giorgio, a prestigious location directly across from St Mark’s Square and the Doge’s Palace, but Italy was on its knees economically and in desperate need of whatever assistance it could find. Art lovers today are the beneficiaries of Vittorio Cini’s vision.

Take the #2 vaporetto from San Zaccaria one stop to San Giorgio. The entrance to the Foundation is just to the right of the vast Palladian church, built in 1565, which dominates the island. Fanning out around the church are a range of spaces, including a temporary art exhibition space hosting major Biennale shows and the ‘Stanze del Vetro’, a museum of Venice’s art glass traditions, with beautifully-curated exhibitions that change every few months.

Further along the island in a renovated squero, or private shipbuilding marina, is the delightful recital hall Auditoriom “Lo Squero”. Keep a look out for the Saturday afternoon chamber concerts that take place throughout the year. The glass wall behind the stage affords a superlative view over the lagoon during performances. The newest addition to the Foundation’s San Giorgio complex is the ‘Stanze della Fotografia’, opened in May 2023. The Foundation stepped in to provide a space for photographic exhibitions after the collapse of the ‘Tre Oci’ museum on the neighbouring island of Giudecca.

The best thing about the Giorgio Cini Foundation is that the exhibitions are free (concerts cost around €30). Team up your visit to the Foundation with an ascent of the bell tower of San Giorgio for marvellous views and perhaps a tour of the grand monastery next to the church, which functioned for centuries as a State Guest House for the Venetian republic. (Cosimo de’ Medici sat out his Florentine exile here.)

More information in English on the activities of the Giorgio Cini Foundation can be found here.

Robert Veel has taught Venice’s history, architecture and art for nearly three decades. He has led numerous cultural tours to the city and spends about four months a year there, in his apartment in the San Polo district.