Venice

From Alps to Atlantic (3) Mestre

Mestre

Can you just talk about Elephant and Castle and not about London? Or Jersey and not Manhattan? I’ll try to write about Mestre (where I took not a single picture) without mentioning the one reference across the lagoon (339 snaps in 4 days).

I can talk about Mestre in many ways (not to my pride somehow): a place where you get from an airport to jump into a train each morning and come back to sleep each night. Or a harbour where I never saw a ship. Or a place where each night I thougt “here, at least you have not to pull a luggage through low light and somehow derelict, narrow streets”. But the simplest would be to say that Mestre is just a sample of the 95% of the European territory in which we live despite the fact it is not that thrilling, even if it is much more practical than the really emotional 5% that makes us go through Mestre in the first place.

And the “best” is that once you’re out, you read and conclude that, had you known that city under different conditions, it could even have been intresting. But you can’t be the gate to Venice and remain unharmed…

Water (5) Venice
The Palace as seen from the bell tower of San Giorgio il Magiore

The Palace as seen from the bell tower of San Giorgio il Magiore

The Palace of the Dogi in Venice is one of the most impressing power headquarters I have visited. Its presence on the bay, showing itself clearly to the visitor, is noteworthy; it shows no impressive beauty in itself from the distance, but it is well inscribed in an overwhelming façade.

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The most interesting thing is what cannot be seen from outside (or what can be seen but not understood). The Palace houses the halls for the different councils that ruled the Republic, some of which had to take a large number of councilors. The logical solution from a structural viewpoint would have been to put these halls on the ground floor, with a majestic roof in the center of the courtyard, and then have the other, smaller dependencies, rise around and better using a masonry structure. But in this case the council halls were located on the highest level. This explains a lighter appearance of the two lower levels, giving a clear quality to the St Mark’s square and the urban front to the Grand Canal (even if beyond the colonnades you have massive walls), and the heavier appearance of the upper floor, in which the large halls are. On the corridors between these large halls there are giant maps of the world that show the vision that the navigator’s Republic had of itself.

The courtyard

The courtyard

The entire building is a palimpsest of styles and ways to decorate and organize an architecture, with surprising variations in corners, but always integrating that need to give a ceremonial access to the upper level to a sizeable number of councilors, having as a courtyard companion the St Mark’s Cathedral.

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Urban retail (12) Venice
A part of the itinerary between the rail station and Saint Mark square

A part of the itinerary between the rail station and Saint Mark square

While I lived in Belgium I met an italian architecture student from Verona; he had made his precedent studies in the Venice architecture school. Each time he told anyone about that, people mused “oh, Venice, what a beautiful city, to get lost and wander through its small streets and canals…!”, so he replied “so, you know, in fact it is easy to get lost in Venice, and it is not that wonderful when you are coming home at night with your groceries…”

Saying that Venice is an urban singularity is just self evident. What is not so visible as a tourist are those everyday problems residents find… There are no many streets, but canals –> so there are few street level spaces for shops, and they are scarce but for a reduced number of paths. Those throughfares are used by a hughe mass of fourists, whose purchasing power displaces such minor things as locals trying to buy their tomatoes. I don’t know if things have changed, but not long ago common supermarkets where nearly impossible to find, and street markets where nearly the only way to get your food. For apparel and any other thing that a tourist could buy, prices where far from competitive with mainland shops.

The city is, no doubt, worth the trip; I visited in january 2007 and it was wonderful. But if I had to live in Venice, the choice would be hard between living on the islands or on the mainland (the islands are so interesting…)

The inner street on Rialto Bridge. Many tourist shops, but they won't let you see the Grand Canal...

The inner street on Rialto Bridge. Many tourist shops, but they won’t let you see the Grand Canal…

The external façade of the Rialto Bridge

The external façade of the Rialto Bridge

The arcades of Saint Mark's square

The arcades of Saint Mark’s square

Saint Mark's square, far from being a uniform space, is interesting due to the variety of the buildings on it

Saint Mark’s square, far from being a uniform space, is interesting due to the variety of the buildings on it