By the 18th century she was without political power and world trade was flowing through other channels. This, however, was when the rest of the world fell most in love with her. English aristocrats flocked here on their grand tours, Goethe wrote descriptions that drew early tourists and anyone with money who wanted a fast, decadent life with great clothes and an exotic mask could rent a palace and live the dream.Ca'Rezzonico, an impressive palace on the Grand Canal, exemplifies this age. Not completed until 1756, it's hundreds of years younger than its neighbours and strikingly different in its neoclassical regularity. A few years after completion, a family member became Pope and another made a fabulously prosperous marriage. At the time, the combination made this palazzo one of Venice's most significant places to be seen. It's thus wonderfully logical that it's now a museum to Venice in the 18th century.
While there's an interesting collection of paintings and some impressive pieces of furniture, the real thing to see here is the palace itself. The main rooms wind around a piano nobile of exceptional height. You enter on the side away from the Grand Canal, climbing a magnificent white marble staircase to arrive in a ballroom covered with some of the most magnificent tromp l'oeil (fool the eye) paintings you'll ever see. Billowing draperies, columns, balconies, gods and putti thrusting their limbs into the room all look real, but are simply illusions created with paint. There follows a procession of rooms with grand ceilings, most with more frolicking deities and fat baby angels who hover over slightly more restrained classical interiors. At the front, two salons and a great hall look over the Grand Canal. Here the decor is a bit less flamboyant, if only because it's hard to compete with the picture postcard views out the towering windows.
There are two more floors, mostly filled with paintings. Here the architecture is less grand, but still worth a wander. Though of great architectural and historic significance, Ca'Rezzonico is a second tier museum in this city and sees far less traffic than the main sites; we were alone in many rooms and never had more than six people for company even in the biggest spaces.
Another blockbuster without a lot of tourist traffic is La Fenice opera house. This is certainly, in part, because it's very expensive (8 euro) for the little bit you see, and not on the Venice Card scheme. Thus only the dedicated are there. But for either the serious opera fan, or those who wonder at architectural re-creation, this is a must see. The place couldn't have a better name. Fenice means phoenix, and this theatre has, like its avian namesake, risen from the ashes more than once. The most recent fire destroyed the entire theatre in 1996. Fifteen years later you'd never know it, as the whole place has been rebuilt to the exact details of old.
Tourists get an audio tour with their admission that talks them through the history of the building and the story of the latest restoration. You get to explore the entry foyer before going upstairs to look at an impressive model of the building inside and out. After that you can settle into a seat in the royal box to take a good look at the theatre itself. The box is so opulent, with its gilded putti, baroque woodwork and copious mirrors, that it actually takes a moment for you to look beyond. You then see an impressive galleried space around a traditional stage, topped by a ceiling painted to look like a dawn sky. A few frolicking deities seem to have flown over from the Ca'Rezzonico. The colour scheme is actually a bit off-putting: pink, light blue, white and gold, it is feminine bordering on what the English would dismiss as "twee". But it's of its time (the 1830s), and would no doubt be a great place to see and be seen while enjoying a performance. I don't know if we were lucky, or if this is a regular feature, but a pianist was practicing on stage while we were there, which added greatly to the atmosphere.
Once you tear yourself away from the theatre, you can explore a series of reception rooms at the front of the building used for entertainment during the intervals. Clearly, they also do a fair amount of corporate entertaining here, and the ballroom at the end of the complex is used for smaller concerts. If you can't get to a concert here, then paying to take the self guided tour is an excellent second best.
Venice's naval museum was another new sight on this visit and, I'm afraid, a rather disappointing one. You'd expect a former maritime empire that derived all its fortune and power from trade over sea routes, and whose capital works on water rather than roads, to have one of the best naval collections on Earth. And it might, if it had several million to invest in installation, explanation and the building itself. Alas, this is like so many of Italy's museums: a treasure trove of great stuff bundled together into a crumbling building with little staff and only the barest, dry and academic labels for what you're looking at. (And yes, my Italian is good enough to tell you that the locals don't get much better than the English translations.) Its organisation is also confusing, as you're confronted with World War II upon entry ... let's face it, not Italy's finest hour, although Piers said the manned torpedo on display was actually justifiably famous ... and don't get to the glory years until you're upstairs.
It is, however, worth the making the effort for the model of the Bucintoro alone. One of the most lavish crafts ever built, probably second only to the legendary barge on which Cleopatra seduced Mark Antony, the Bucintoro was essentially a floating version of the Doge's palace. It represented Venice's special relationship with the sea, and played its biggest ceremonial role on Ascension Day, when the Doge, the most important members of court, ambassadors and special guests would board to be rowed into the Adriatic, where the Doge would throw a golden ring into the sea to "marry" her for another year and proclaim his dominion. The model is meticulous in its detail, showing the parquet floors, stately throne, lavish sculptural carving and typically Venetian levels of gold leaf. You'll wish you could, Alice-in-Wonderland-like, sip some potion to shrink so you could scramble around inside it. Alas, you'll just have to stand behind the glass and gawp.The museum has many rooms of detailed ship's models, and a good collection of full-sized gondole. (Yes, I spelled it right. That's the plural of gondola.) A good example of the poor labeling ... it's from the Rough Guide, rather than anything in the museum itself, that I learned the reason for so many, and such exact, models is that the craftsmen in the dockyards worked from these rather than any kind of blueprint. Make sure you get to the gondole rooms, where you'll see the range of craft from the workday basics to the lavish private boats built to take aristocratic families to grand social occasions. (Even in the 1830s, when they were building La Fenice, they insisted on both a water and a land entry, as the most fashionable would make a grand arrival by gondola.) Also look out for the model of the clever lift system which surrounded a ship and elevated its draft, allowing heavily loaded vessels of the 18th and 19th centuries to get into the shallow lagoon. You'll also find galleries of naval costume, sea shells, ship models from other countries, even a Swedish room dedicated to Vikings and several artistic and military partnerships between the Swedes and the Venetians (who knew?). With limited time, however, you're best to stick to the highlights mentioned above.
My last new discovery was a trio of magnificent churches. The blockbuster amongst them was the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (known in the local dialect as Zanipolo), a place which, I'll admit, it now embarrasses me to say I didn't even know existed. It was a shocking hole in my art historical knowledge of the city, because Zanipolo should be on anyone's Venetian top 5. A vast Gothic church, its undecorated ceilings and large windows make it lighter and less claustrophobic than the heavily decorated St. Mark's. But don't imagine you'll find austerity. This is the burial place of most of the doges, and almost every inch of the wall space is filled with grand tombs. Most are monumental sculptures. A few are painted. (There are some fine Veroneses.) One portrays the grisly story of a doge who was captured by the Turks and flayed alive; his dried skin is preserved in the urn near the top of the memorial. Outside, don't miss the ornate marble facade of the building next door. It is, believe it or not, the hospital.
That same treatment of marble ... multi-coloured yet symmetrical, ornate yet ordered in its Renaissance sensibilities ... is the most memorable aspect of the second of our church discoveries, Santa Maria Dei Miracoli. It's a small place compared to Zanipolo, remarkable
because the interior has the exact same marble walls as outside. It's a striking yet calming effect, which therefore doesn't distract you from the church's most unusual architectural feature. The altar is raised a full story above the rest of the church, up an awe-inspiring white marble staircase. It's so ancient Roman in its influences that you almost expect Augustus to emerge at the top to welcome a triumphant general home. Instead, you get a lovely but unremarkable statue of the Madonna and child that was reputed to work miracles, hence the church's name. The only thing that throws off this vision of classical elegance is the ceiling. Don't look up, if you can help it. The barrel vault is dark wood of many coffers, each painted with a different scene. As if that Venetian tendency for excess took over at the end and the architects said "well, we have to cover something with ornate bits and bobs."The final church that gets a nod is Madonna Dell'Orto, located conveniently next to our hotel thus un-missable. It's probably not worth going out of your way for, but if in this area, it's worth popping in to admire its austere (for Venice) Gothicism and its excellent collection of Tintorettos (he's buried here).
So there you are. It was my fifth trip to Venice. I had four days. I managed to explore six places I'd never seen before. And the best part? There's still a generous list of museums, palaces and churches into which I have yet to set foot. Now that's a city with hidden depths.
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