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Beyond the garden.
The most astounding, singular sight I saw in Venice didn't even happen in the city itself. It was out on Lido, on the southern beach, walking east along the Adriatic Sea. I saw a hermit crab find a new home. The crab I was holding had nearly outgrown its old shell and was trying to move into a new one more suitable for its needs, also in my hands - except the new shell was still occupied by a dead crab. And the living one was trying its best to dig it out and to make room for itself. When I realized what I was watching, I hollered down the beach for my brother to come running, and when he got there, I set the shells down in the receding afternoon tide. We witnessed the live crab pull the dead one free of its shell to drift away - and then, bam. It just popped right in. Quite literally instantaneously.
And off it went, back to the sea.
It was a very fitting sight for Venice. There's no sprawl, no suburbs, no skyscrapers. The city can't go anywhere. I've joked that San Francisco is constrained with water on three sides; Venice did it one better and has water on all sides. When the city reached its limit, it settled down into more or less what it is today. My family routinely walked past buildings from the seventeenth century that were still in use as family houses, because that's what they'd been constructed as, and that's what they were there for. So that's what they were used for. It's settled into itself in a way no other city I've lived in or visited has ever been able to manage. Other cities have the luxury of being able to change, to build and rebuild. Venice can rediscover itself as many times as it likes, to have a regular tidal decline and rise every few decades if it wants, but it can't change itself. It can only ever be Venice. Even Pittsburgh can change itself. The superficial changes in things like economic focus and population demographics and the occasional new building only a couple centuries old are just that: superficial. Venice's inherent character was defined a long time ago.
Part of that character means it doesn't have population density the way other major global cities do. There are only so many people that can live there - even on Lido, a large and distant island with exceptionally tall buildings, the apartment houses didn't get more than ten or twelve stories high. What Venice has is living density: it's not people per square foot so much as it is every livable square foot is always occupied. The instant something's free to use, someone uses it. Every residential building had window gardens, whether it was a couple of plants on a windowsill or a full-scale herb garden to make a three-Michelin star kitchen nod in approval. The few backyards we saw never went to waste, rooftop patios were more common than not, and even the empty space out in the big squares and plazas was put to use to give children places to play soccer and dogs to run around and people to stroll through as they ate their gelato.
People still use boats to get around. Now, more boats have motors, and there are some small ferries that serve as public transportation, but it's still a city built on water.
My family was lucky enough to stay inside the city itself, in a sort of bed-and-breakfast with a little courtyard and patio. We'd have our breakfasts out there: savory puff pastry stuffed with oil-whipped tuna topped with pistachios or cayenne pepper or sliced pickles, hard-boiled eggs topped with olive oil and pepper, all sorts of breads and cakes and cold cereals, fruit and Caprese salads, strong bittersweet coffee with sweet milk. Everything we ate, breakfast to dinner, was fresh and delightful: tomato risotto to make men swoon, anchovies with soft white cheese and sun-dried tomatoes and arugula to balance texture and flavor, splendidly balanced simple lentil salads and pasta done al dente as it should be and is rarely achieved. Nearly every menu offered peach bellinis, and plain mint gelato without any chocolate chips could be found in most every hole-in-the-wall gelateria.
We went to art museums in old mansions and the building which gave English the word armory; we went biking through the streets and walking on the beaches in Lido where I shouted in delight over lizards and a snake; we prayed in the Spanish Synagogue in the Jewish Ghetto and visited all sorts of churches scattered across the islands. And every so often, as we'd be walking, the city would just stop. There'd be no way to keep going, except by bridge or boat. We'd walk along the little promenades right along the canals, called fundamentos, and peer into the water to see what was living there.
Before we went into the synagogue, we were stopped and asked if we were going in as tourists or to pray; we told the guard we were going into pray. I wasn't thrown by being stopped, just by the thought people would go to a synagogue to be tourists. Even though we went to so many churches to visit, it hadn't occurred to me people would do the same for a synagogue. Just a few hours later, on the ferry ride out to Murano, I saw mountains, exactly the sort of mountains I haven't seen since California. It felt strange, to go all the way around the world to come home.
Then I turned around and looked at Venice.
It's a city as densely settled into itself as a hermit crab is into its shell.
And off it went, back to the sea.
It was a very fitting sight for Venice. There's no sprawl, no suburbs, no skyscrapers. The city can't go anywhere. I've joked that San Francisco is constrained with water on three sides; Venice did it one better and has water on all sides. When the city reached its limit, it settled down into more or less what it is today. My family routinely walked past buildings from the seventeenth century that were still in use as family houses, because that's what they'd been constructed as, and that's what they were there for. So that's what they were used for. It's settled into itself in a way no other city I've lived in or visited has ever been able to manage. Other cities have the luxury of being able to change, to build and rebuild. Venice can rediscover itself as many times as it likes, to have a regular tidal decline and rise every few decades if it wants, but it can't change itself. It can only ever be Venice. Even Pittsburgh can change itself. The superficial changes in things like economic focus and population demographics and the occasional new building only a couple centuries old are just that: superficial. Venice's inherent character was defined a long time ago.
Part of that character means it doesn't have population density the way other major global cities do. There are only so many people that can live there - even on Lido, a large and distant island with exceptionally tall buildings, the apartment houses didn't get more than ten or twelve stories high. What Venice has is living density: it's not people per square foot so much as it is every livable square foot is always occupied. The instant something's free to use, someone uses it. Every residential building had window gardens, whether it was a couple of plants on a windowsill or a full-scale herb garden to make a three-Michelin star kitchen nod in approval. The few backyards we saw never went to waste, rooftop patios were more common than not, and even the empty space out in the big squares and plazas was put to use to give children places to play soccer and dogs to run around and people to stroll through as they ate their gelato.
People still use boats to get around. Now, more boats have motors, and there are some small ferries that serve as public transportation, but it's still a city built on water.
My family was lucky enough to stay inside the city itself, in a sort of bed-and-breakfast with a little courtyard and patio. We'd have our breakfasts out there: savory puff pastry stuffed with oil-whipped tuna topped with pistachios or cayenne pepper or sliced pickles, hard-boiled eggs topped with olive oil and pepper, all sorts of breads and cakes and cold cereals, fruit and Caprese salads, strong bittersweet coffee with sweet milk. Everything we ate, breakfast to dinner, was fresh and delightful: tomato risotto to make men swoon, anchovies with soft white cheese and sun-dried tomatoes and arugula to balance texture and flavor, splendidly balanced simple lentil salads and pasta done al dente as it should be and is rarely achieved. Nearly every menu offered peach bellinis, and plain mint gelato without any chocolate chips could be found in most every hole-in-the-wall gelateria.
We went to art museums in old mansions and the building which gave English the word armory; we went biking through the streets and walking on the beaches in Lido where I shouted in delight over lizards and a snake; we prayed in the Spanish Synagogue in the Jewish Ghetto and visited all sorts of churches scattered across the islands. And every so often, as we'd be walking, the city would just stop. There'd be no way to keep going, except by bridge or boat. We'd walk along the little promenades right along the canals, called fundamentos, and peer into the water to see what was living there.
Before we went into the synagogue, we were stopped and asked if we were going in as tourists or to pray; we told the guard we were going into pray. I wasn't thrown by being stopped, just by the thought people would go to a synagogue to be tourists. Even though we went to so many churches to visit, it hadn't occurred to me people would do the same for a synagogue. Just a few hours later, on the ferry ride out to Murano, I saw mountains, exactly the sort of mountains I haven't seen since California. It felt strange, to go all the way around the world to come home.
Then I turned around and looked at Venice.
It's a city as densely settled into itself as a hermit crab is into its shell.
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It's interesting what you say about visiting synagogues, because I found when I was travelling around Europe that in most cities there was very little information about synagogues that you could visit the way you would Cathedrals. Even in places that you could find information about them, they would be badly signposted and I would get lost trying to find them. (Same with Mosques.) The exception being Prague which - comparitively - makes quite a lot of its Jewish heritage, so naturally the day when I could have visited was Sabbat when they were, understandably, closed to tourists.