Leading Pictures of

A Lover of Venice

A collection of the homepage pictures from 2007 to the present



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"Virgin Citie of Venice, the Queene of the Christian World, that Diamond set in the ring of the Adriatique gulfe, and the most resplendent mirrour of Europe...a subject worthy for the greatest Monarch in the world to reade over." Thomas Coryat, English traveler, "Crudities," 1608.




"Venice's architecture is born of light. It is light which provides the architect's palette and gives him his instructions." André Suarès.

Rio del Gozzi from Ponte dei Sartori, Cannaregio.

"Venice emerged, like life itself, from the mud." Gore Vidal in "Vidal in Venice."

From a vantage point between the islands of Murano and Le Vignole

"The real Venetians...would take to the water on foot if they could." Ivo Prandin.

Campo Santa Margarita


"Venice is a wholly visceral experience where what we see is so much less than what we perceive or feel." Annabelle Selldorf.

Palazzi Corner Valmarana, Grimani and Corner-Contarini dei Cavalli (San Marco)


"The melancholy that belongs to Venice is medicinal." Annabelle Selldorf.

Rio de la Salute


"Sono stato a Venezia molte volte. Per questo credo fermamente di non conoscerla." ("I've been to Venice many times. And so I believe not to know her"). Haim Baharier

Peggy Guggenheim Collection


"I have learned to know a Venice in Venice that the others seem never to have perceived." James Whistler, 1880.

Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia


"We can't expect to really get to know a place after three weeks or three months of being there, but we can let the place challenge ourselves, our identities, and our world view so that when we walk through our front door after a trip we're different people." David Farley in "30 Days in Italy."

Punta de la Dogana


"The simplest thing to tell you of Venice is that I  adore it – have fallen deeply and desperately in love with it. I had been there twice before but each time only for a few days. This time I have drunk deep, and the magic potion has entered my blood." Henry James, "Letters," 1881.

Piazzetta, Molo


"Venetians never felt like refugees from a lost classical heritage and never experienced the same deep longing for its recovery felt in other Italian cities. By the time of the early Italian Renaissance, Venice was the wealthiest state in Europe and had already completed her greatest architectural achievements." Dial Parrott, "The Genius of Venice.," 2013.

Molo


"...strangers  over whom has been thrown the spell of the siren; who, leaving her, have borne away with them an incurable wound, for which the only solace has been to dwell again in memory with the features of the beloved, and to reproduce her lineaments on the mirror of the mind." Horatio Brown, "In and Around Venice," 1905.

San Giorgio Maggiore


"It seems only sensible to walk in Venice; nowhere else will the walker be so well rewarded, and the streets hard though their surfaces appear, have a miraculous spring in the paving which makes fatigue almost impossible." J. G. Links, "Venice for Pleasure."

Fondamenta de la Toletta


"The houses of this city are very notable and very tall and with many chambers and with many chimneys, and grace themselves with rich façades and windows to the streets, richly wrought in gold and azure, all covered in marble." Pero Tafur, Spanish traveler, "Wanderings and Travels," 1435-1439.

Scuola di San Marco

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." Henry Bergson.

Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli


"This city is so clean to walk in as if a man were walking in a gracious chamber, because it is well paved and well bricked over; no four-legged beast enters it, it doesn't accumulate water in winter, and thus there is no mud nor dust in summer; there the seas wax and wane, but not as much as in the Ponent, and take away the filth from the secret places, or else they could not live because of the stench, and they still say that sometimes the air gets infected, and that's why they have so many fires, winter and summer, and burn many perfumes and bring with themselves big smells..." Pero Tafur, Spanish traveler, "Wanderings and Travels," 1435-1439.

Santi Geremia e Lucia


"I Mercury shine auspiciously on this above all other emporia." Jacopo de'Barbari, "View of Venice," 1500.

Squero di San Trovaso


"Beauty of surface, of tone, of detail, of things near enough to touch and kneel upon and lean against." Henry James.

San Pietro de Castello


"There never has been room for tragedy in Venice" Peter Ackroyd, "Venice, Pure City."

Grand Canal from Ponte de l'Accademia at sunrise


"Departure, Risk. Profit. Glory. These were the compass points of Venetian Life." Roger Crowley, "City of Fortune. How Venice Ruled the Seas."

Aeroporto Nicelli, Sant'Elena campanile and Euganean Hills


"Venice embraces those whom all others shun. She raises those whom others lower. She affords a welcome to those who are persecuted  elsewhere." Pietro Aretino in an address to the doge, 1527.

Scuola Italiana, Ghetto Nuovo.


"I cannot give the dimensions of this city, for it appears to me not one city alone but several cities placed together." Pietro Casola, Italian traveler, "Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," 1494.

Bacino di San Marco, sestiere di Castello and lagoon from San Giorgio Maggiore


"Long ago, long ago on the waves built a city, as lovely as seems To some bard in his dreams." Lord Lytton (Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton,"Owen Meredith")

Anzolo Rafael



"I find it hard to understand why, if the Republic was an oligarchy utterly selfish and despotic, it has left to all classes of Venetians so much regret and sorrow for its fall." W. D. Howells, "Venetian Life."

Bacino di San Marco


"If I were not King of France, I would choose to be a citizen of Venice." Henry III, 1574

Campiello Barbaro


"...Calendario had also displayed his remarkable genius as a sculptor. It was his novel idea to erect groups of near life-size figures representing stories from the Old Testament, The Drunkenness of Noah and the Fall of Man, at the lower corners of the Palace. Placing large-scale sculpted images in such prominent, eye-level locations on the corners (as opposed to the entranceways) of a monumental public building was a new concept that (except for the remounted Tetrarchs on the corner of  the San Marco treasury) no Greek, Roman, or earlier medieval sculptor had attempted." Dial Parrott, "The Genius of Venice," 2013.

Palazzo Ducale



"The sails of Venice are a constant object of beauty in the landscape; their deep oranges and reds; their fantastic designs –here a heart pierced by a sword, there a rose in bloom, or a star with a flash of lightning from it– contrast so vividly with the cool gray of the waters upon which they float." Horatio Brown, "In and Around Venice," 1905.

Canal de la Giudecca



"It is hard to believe how comfortable the [gondolas] in Venice are until you have tried them. For they offer so much comfort to passengers who have made long trips by horse and carriage and arrive at Marghera or at some other point of embarkation where the calm restores their exhausted bodies that they finish the journey as though they were sitting at home. As a result, they forget their sufferings and they are rewarded by the sight, in the midst of the waves, of many beautiful palaces...I have experienced this many times myself, having been tossed around in carriages and endured the miseries of riding on horseback." Cesare Vecellio, "Degli Habiti Antichi et Moderni di Diverse Parti del Mondo," 1590.

Rio de San Boldo


"Smile and be happy. You are in Venice." Shannon Essa and Ruth Edenbaum, "Chow! Venice"

Caffè Lavena


"I Neptune reside here protecting the waters at this port." Jacopo de'Barbari, "View of Venice," 1500.

Lagoon


"In the winter, Venice is like an abandoned theater. The play is finished but the echoes remain." A. Blatas

Rio de l'Orso off Campo Santo Stefano



"There are two ways of getting about in Venice: by foot on the dry land, and by boat." Marin Sanudo, 1493.

Grand Canal. Ca' Rezzonico and Ca' Foscari



"Reeling from the assaults of beauty, backing away from its abysmal depths and your own incapacity to embrace it, explain it, you seek relief. For an instant, like so many Venetians of centuries past, you wish to become a fugitive from splendor." Janet Sethre

Grand Canal


"La geografia di Venezia è soprattutto un'avventura della mente" (The geography of Venice is above all an adventure of the mind). Franco Ricciardiello, "Storie di Venezia."

Grand Canal from Ca' Rezzonico


"Only to those who linger here after they have seen the sights, knowing that they should have left, does it reveal itself." Ian Littlewood

Giudecca


"Just before Mass, the lights go everywhere, blazing on the mosaics and flooding the place with a shower of gold.
At a very human level, this is death and rebirth." Mary Jane Phillips-Matz

Basilica di San Marco


"The singular thing, which upsets any idea of proportion, is that this jumble of columns, of capitals, of basreliefs, of enamels, of mosaics - this mingling of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab and Gothic styles - produces the most harmonious possible whole." Théophile Gautier

Piazza San Marco




"At sunset all cities look wonderful, but some more than others." Joseph Brodsky

Lagoon


"For there the fancies of men have suffered the Sea Change of half a score centuries; there their minds have met from east and west, and the currents of a hundred nations have whirled and eddied in the narrow vortex, ever with new glory rising from the foam; and the Stern Pisan and the Dreamy Greek and the restless Arab, the languid Ottomite and the strong Teuton; there the patience of early Christianity and the enthusiasm of medieval superstition, and the fire of ancient and the rationalism of recent infidelity, have all had their work, and all their time. There the marbles of a thousand mountains have been labored, each by those who dwelt at their feet, and the offerings of a thousand isles have met in one cloud of incense - and out of this masque and morrice of Kingdoms and times, there has arisen one wild Sea Harmony, the sweetest that ever human soul conceived." John Ruskin

Palazzo Ducale


"If human beings can build a city like this, their souls deserve to be saved." Anthony Burgess

Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge


"...a confusion of delight, amidst which the beasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breath of golden strength, and the Saint Mark's lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crest of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers in the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst." John Ruskin

Basilica di San Marco



"Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice." Italo Calvino


San Giorgio Maggiore


"In Venice you are abused by beauty." Tiziano Scarpa

Madonna de l'Orto


"Venice is a city of yesterdays." E. V. Lucas

Campo de la Madalena


"Beauty is the promise of happiness." Stendhal

Santa Maria dei Miracoli



"The Florentines, who were incapable of ruling themselves, produced a great theorist of government: Machiavelli. The Venetians had no theorists and evolved a model republic." Mary McCarthy

Canal de Cannaregio


"The beauty that is hidden away, not the beauty that is revealed, is the city's essence." Max Beerbohm

Calle de le Boteghe, San Marco





"Winter light seems sharper, the low angle of the sun means it bounces off pale terracotta walls and floods squares and courtyards with a bright, pink glow." Russell Norman, "Venice. Four Seasons of Home Cooking"

Grand Canal from Ponte de la Costituzione



"...and disembarking we are glad to be at home again. For even an afternoon's absence is like an act of treachery." E. V. Lucas

Canal de la Giudecca


"If there is one experience more delightful than a first visit to Venice, it is a second." Thomas Okey


Campo Sant'Angelo



"...the heels that echo as you walk the calli at night are the punctuation of your solitude." Tiziano Scarpa

Grand Canal from Ponte de l'Accademia under the full moon


"...the fondamenta whose name proclaims your diagnosis regardless of the nature of your malady."
Joseph Brodsky on the Fondamenta degli Incurabili.


Rio de la Fornace


"Other cities have admirers, Venice alone has lovers." Paul de St. Victor

Bacino di San Marco


"Although our stays in Venice tend to be short, we always leave traces behind us. Every time we come back, a little more of our being threads its way into her tapestry, and so the memories of our visits gradually create a synopsis of our personal history." Petr Král

Fondamenta del Soccorso

"Fifty people on the vaporetto. / Bundled in hats, scarves and gloves, / we're alone with a hundred restless / shifting eyes." Mark Rudman, "Provoked in Venice."

Grand Canal. Palazzo Balbi.


"The only way to care for Venice as she deserves it is to give her a chance to touch you often –to linger and remain and return." Henry James, "Henry James on Italy."

Campo Santo Stefano, San Marco



"If Venice didn't have a bridge, Europe would be an island." Mario Stefani

Grand Canal

"Venice is not only, like Paris, a context for romantic encounters, it is also a partner in them, becoming almost, to the solitary traveler, itself the object of desire." Ian Littlewood

Rio dei Barcaroli, San Marco




"The way to enjoy Venice is to follow the example of these people and make the most of simple pleasures." Henry James, "Henry James on Italy."

Grand Canal with Palazzo Morosini-Brandolin (Italian flag) and Ca' Corner della Regina (blue banner). Between the two: Palazzetto Fornoni,
Palazzetto Iona and Ca' Favretto. Farther up: Palazzo Correggio, Palazzo Donà and Ca' Pesaro.




"..this city improves time's looks, beautifies the future. That's what the role of this city in the universe is." Joseph Brodsky, "Watermark."

View of Burano from Torcello's campanile





"A city built in the air would be something still more wonderful; but any other must yield the palm to this for singularity and imposing effect." William Hazlitt, 1826, "Notes on a Journey through France and Italy."

Ponte Cavallo on Rio dei Mendicanti, Castello-Cannaregio



"I think it is Hazlitt who said that the only thing which could beat this city built on water would be a city built in air" Joseph Brodsky

Santa Maria degli Angeli, Murano


"When I went to Venice, I discovered that my dream had become- incredibly, but quite simply- my address." Marcel Proust

Ca' d'Oro



 
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