Results tagged “Venice” from Intelligent Travel Blog

As we mentioned earlier, the National Geographic Museum in DC has just opened a wonderful free exhibit called "Kodachrome Culture: The American Tourist in Europe," featuring big, luscious blowups of travel photos that appeared in the pages of National Geographic magazine (we call it NGM for short) in the 1950s and '60s. I particularly liked this photo of feeding pigeons in St. Mark's Square in Venice, dated 1957, by Ardean Miller III.

I was curious about the photo, so I pulled the second half of 1957 off our shelves (we keep the older magazines in leather-bound volumes), and found the picture on page 791, with the following caption (or legend, in NGM-speak):

"Finest Drawing Room in Europe," Napoleon Called Venice's Marbled Piazza
Gilded pinnacles and gem-bright mosaics give St. Mark's Cathedral the look of an oriental palace, Built about 830 and several times reconstructed, it is graced by treasures won when the city reigned as Queen of the Adriatic.

In his latest column, our book critic Don George reviews the new title, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, by Geoff Dyer, about a British art journalist sent to cover the Venice Biennale. In it, George writes, the main character Jeff Atman's exploits are both dizzying and quintessentially Venetian:

[His] Bellini-fueled adventures offer artful angles from which to appreciate anew Venice's enduring attractions: the canals, palazzos, gondoliers, and vaporetti; the crumbling pastels, illusory waterways, and century-spanning bells. Through Atman, Dyer touches the elusive soul of Venice, the unexpected beauties of glass and grave, the way you can get lost at any minute and then, after wandering for an hour, suddenly appear at the doorway to your hotel, miles from where it was supposed to be.

Read the rest of George's review here, plus more book picks from Mexico, Australia, and Pakistan. And learn more about Venice from our Places of a Lifetime series. 

Photo: Jimmy Leo 

Costumed contessas catch up at Caffé Florian

Carnevale, Venice's ancient festival, suspension of social norms, and celebration of the gradual passage from winter to spring, kicks of this Friday, February 13, and runs through Tuesday, February 24th. This year's theme, Sensation: Six Senses for Six Districts, strives to showcase each of the lagoon city's unique neighborhoods with a variety of activities in each including food events, theater performances, and best mask contests for kids.

To get a handle on what Carnevale is all about, I've chatted with Traveler Senior Editor Sheila Buckmaster, who's been to Venice to revel in Carnevale six times, and is returning once again to celebrate. Sheila tells me Venice during Carnevale is her favorite travel experience. The atmosphere is elegant, not sleazy or raucous. Venice, a World Heritage site, serves as the perfect backdrop for the ornate costumes and masks.

And Sheila doesn't just visit Venice to see how everyone else is dressing, she participates in the festivities herself as ... Charlie Chaplin. She tells me she and Charlie share a birthday. She dons a black suit, white shirt, tie, cane, and iconic mustache and wanders the day away through Venice's narrow passageways and over its bridges.

As Charlie Chaplin was a silent film star, so too is Sheila silent during her peregrinations of Venice. She tells me people stop her and wonder aloud if Charlie's a man or a woman, Italian, German, British, French, or American. She uses pantomime and a handy notebook to communicate when need be. She admits to making the gondoliers chuckle as they glide by, she perched on a bridge, mimicking their rowing motions with her cane.

This week, Venice battled the highest floodwaters it's faced in more than two decades, and the fourth-highest levels in contemporary history. Our friends over at National Geographic have a gripping photo gallery of life continuing in Venice, despite swelling seas and Mayor Massimo Cacciari's request to tourists and residents to stay indoors.

Waters began to subside early Tuesday, after topping 61 inches the day before. But the coast is hardly clear for these Adriatic islands, as experts say global warming is to blame. While flooding is a regular occurrence in Venetian life (I went there two years ago and was surprised by the elevated walkways installed every afternoon at St. Mark's Square), the severity of such flooding is rapidly increasing.

Help may be on the way in the form of the controversial Moses project, a $5.4 billion plan that would involve retractable metal gates being installed on the seafloor, which is expected to be completed in 2014. Moses would be activated if flood levels rose more to more than 43 inches, which can happen multiple times a year in Venice. But environmental groups are pushing instead for carbon emission cuts as a solution, arguing that such a quick fix will do nothing to protect the famed floating city in the long-term future.

Photo via JoshNoland's Flicker