Torcello is romantic, beautiful, and ... if you get your timing right ... one of the few places in the Venetian lagoon where you can experience a sense of splendid isolation.
If you’d visited in tenth century, this would have been the busiest place in the whole lagoon, with at least 3,000 residents, grand palazzi, 12 parishes, a thriving ecosystem of 16 religious houses and flourishing trade routes going back to Roman times. When invaders threatened from the east, the citizens of Torcello scouted out islands deeper into the lagoon for greater safety, eventually founding what we know as Venice. Slowly, but surely, they left their original island home behind, taking what they could move with them and abandoning what they couldn't.
If you’d visited in tenth century, this would have been the busiest place in the whole lagoon, with at least 3,000 residents, grand palazzi, 12 parishes, a thriving ecosystem of 16 religious houses and flourishing trade routes going back to Roman times. When invaders threatened from the east, the citizens of Torcello scouted out islands deeper into the lagoon for greater safety, eventually founding what we know as Venice. Slowly, but surely, they left their original island home behind, taking what they could move with them and abandoning what they couldn't.
Today, the island is mostly agricultural, with fewer than 20 full-time inhabitants who pop over to Burano … five minutes across a watery channel … to do their grocery shopping. I was on the morning boat with one of them. Current residents include at least two artists who open their studios by appointment, and there's a long history of creatives seeking refuge here.
Both Hemingway and du Maurier came here to write and included Torcello in their novels. A canal, still well-maintained despite the lack of population, cuts through the island just as others bisect Venice and Murano. There are sill picturesque bridges and a handful of buildings, but there are also abundant views down waterways between vineyards, orchards and grazing fields.
A 10-minute walk from the water bus dock (line 9 spends the day going back and forth between Burano and Torcello) brings you to what was once the town centre. If you are here before 10:30 you may very well be on your own except for a few locals collecting tourist admission fees and manning souvenir stands. Torcello is most often done as a day trip from Venice, combined with Burano and even Murano, and is inevitably the last stop of the day. I didn’t see anything you could call a crowd until after 2pm, when I was thinking about heading off.
Aside from the moody dereliction, most foreign visitors are here to see the inside of the cathedral. Its simple walls protect a mosaic treasure on par with the more famous work down in Ravenna. Mary holds a baby Jesus in the apse above a main altar that looks more like a Roman ruin than a Christian church.The 12 apostles stand beneath her, each a masterpiece of Byzantine craftsmanship. The side altars are slightly newer and more elaborate.
The real masterpiece is on the western wall around the original door, however, where Christ sits in judgement and cartoon-style registers tell the story of the saved and the damned.
As ever with medieval art, hell is much more interesting than heaven and I wish the included audio guide went into more detail about the figures that fiends were poking in the flames. My guess is that they were 12th century bad guys; one looked like he might have been part of an Islamic threat, while another had the look of an “anti-pope”. The guide did explain how the Seven Deadly Sins were represented in the lowest two levels; the vision of gluttons forced to find sustenance by gnawing off their own limbs is enough to put you right off your dinner. Over on the positive side of the ledger, it is lovely to see a zoo’s worth of friendly animals being resurrected with the virtuous dead. Clearly these mosaicists felt we’d need pets in heaven.
All of these scenes, front and back, are played out on a rich background of gold. I find it reassuring, somehow, that the exact same techniques of fusing gold onto glass to make the component parts of these masterpieces are still being used today to make jewellery, art glass and posh wine bottles.
Beside the main church you’ll find a series of picturesque loggias and the octagonal church of St. Fosca. In front of the cathedral and across a little square from St. Fosca is a round water feature, unusually set into the front of the church as if they were built together. I couldn’t find any information on this on site but would guess it's the ruins of an old baptistery. I was charmed enough to sit here for more than an hour drawing St. Fosca and its loggia, never considering the idiocy of lingering next to a pool of stagnant water in a marsh. I was wearing mosquito repellant but the Italian blood-suckers laughed at the inefficiency of my British formula. The next morning the first of more than 50 viscous mosquito bites started rising into blisters. I only survived the rest of the trip my slathering myself with copious amounts of a wonder product called DopoPuntura, and did my best to avoid photos at the wedding we were attending because my arms and feet looked like I had chicken pox. Or worse.
Thankfully I decided to wander a bit rather than adding water colour from that position, or the damage would have been worse.
Just across from the church is the private residence and vineyard of an antique dealer who’s also a part owner of our hotel, Venissa. This is where the vines they’re repatriating on Mazzorbo were discovered. The house and gardens were closed to the public but there are plenty of picturesque photo opps. Just beyond that, across what must have once been Torcello’s main piazza, are a couple of old civic buildings that now house the island’s museum.
There’s a pleasing jumble of bits and pieces here, from the ancient Romans to the baroque with most of stuff from Torcello’s brief, early medieval period in the sun. Assembled by the island’s owner and amateur archaeologists in the late 19th and early 20th century, it’s quite an old-fashioned and quirky collection. There's not much information and no modern attempts at interactive storytelling. I enjoyed it, but doing so probably does require a good base of knowledge to understand what you're looking at. I felt a sinister thrill of terror, for example, when I stumbled upon the two old Bocca di Leone. But it was only my wider reading … most notably Philippa Gregory’s Tidelands trilogy … that gave me the backstory. This is the downside of the exceptionally loose form of democracy that ruled in this lagoon. Government was actually a mostly benevolent dictatorship with ruthless secret police. The lion's mouths covered official post boxes that allowed you to denounce your neighbours anonymously if you thought they were up to no good. There was little legal protection if you got on the wrong side of people in power. Just a knock in the night and disappearing, perhaps never to be heard from again.
Bigger pieces of sculpture are scattered across the lawn and leaned against the walls outside, like an architectural salvage yard. Most notable is the so-called “Attila’s Throne” … which actually has nothing to do with the marauding hun whose 5th-century threats first drove the population to the defensive possibilities of the lagoon. Historian’s now think it was probably the seat of government for whoever was in charge in Torcello. You can see it, and sit on it, without paying for admission into the museum.
There are three ticketed attractions on the island; the church, the bell tower and the museum. The church is a must. The tower no doubt has spectacular views over neighbouring Burano and Mazzorbo, on to Murano and the skyline of Venice beyond, but it was far too hot and humid for me to consider such exertion. Pleasant as it is, tourists in a hurry probably won’t find the museum worth their while. But if you’re the kind of tourist who's in a hurry, I’d suggest you’re probably not going to bother with Torcello. This is a place for dawdling.
While the foreigners head for the historic sites, the Italians seem to have a different idea of the island. There are three restaurants scattered along the canal between dock and cathedral, all of them with menus that lean towards multi-course fine dining. (One, currently closed for renovation, appears to be a branch of Venice’s favourite Cipriani.) The dress code is still casual and the tables sprawled under vine-covered pergolas or shady marquees, looking out over gardens. The patrons, however, were clearly there for serious dining rather than a quick bite between tourist stops. I get the feeling Italians see Torcello as a picturesque place to go for a long al-fresco lunch.
Thankfully I decided to wander a bit rather than adding water colour from that position, or the damage would have been worse.
Just across from the church is the private residence and vineyard of an antique dealer who’s also a part owner of our hotel, Venissa. This is where the vines they’re repatriating on Mazzorbo were discovered. The house and gardens were closed to the public but there are plenty of picturesque photo opps. Just beyond that, across what must have once been Torcello’s main piazza, are a couple of old civic buildings that now house the island’s museum.
There’s a pleasing jumble of bits and pieces here, from the ancient Romans to the baroque with most of stuff from Torcello’s brief, early medieval period in the sun. Assembled by the island’s owner and amateur archaeologists in the late 19th and early 20th century, it’s quite an old-fashioned and quirky collection. There's not much information and no modern attempts at interactive storytelling. I enjoyed it, but doing so probably does require a good base of knowledge to understand what you're looking at. I felt a sinister thrill of terror, for example, when I stumbled upon the two old Bocca di Leone. But it was only my wider reading … most notably Philippa Gregory’s Tidelands trilogy … that gave me the backstory. This is the downside of the exceptionally loose form of democracy that ruled in this lagoon. Government was actually a mostly benevolent dictatorship with ruthless secret police. The lion's mouths covered official post boxes that allowed you to denounce your neighbours anonymously if you thought they were up to no good. There was little legal protection if you got on the wrong side of people in power. Just a knock in the night and disappearing, perhaps never to be heard from again.
There are three ticketed attractions on the island; the church, the bell tower and the museum. The church is a must. The tower no doubt has spectacular views over neighbouring Burano and Mazzorbo, on to Murano and the skyline of Venice beyond, but it was far too hot and humid for me to consider such exertion. Pleasant as it is, tourists in a hurry probably won’t find the museum worth their while. But if you’re the kind of tourist who's in a hurry, I’d suggest you’re probably not going to bother with Torcello. This is a place for dawdling.
While the foreigners head for the historic sites, the Italians seem to have a different idea of the island. There are three restaurants scattered along the canal between dock and cathedral, all of them with menus that lean towards multi-course fine dining. (One, currently closed for renovation, appears to be a branch of Venice’s favourite Cipriani.) The dress code is still casual and the tables sprawled under vine-covered pergolas or shady marquees, looking out over gardens. The patrons, however, were clearly there for serious dining rather than a quick bite between tourist stops. I get the feeling Italians see Torcello as a picturesque place to go for a long al-fresco lunch.
There is one place more like a snack bar and rough beer garden, called La Taverna Tipica Veneziana, where those not interested in a big meal congregate. It’s the one closest to the boat dock, has cold beer on tap and clean bathrooms. It’s here that I settled down to paint my take on St. Fosca, unwittingly saving my skin from further attack. Every 15 minutes from around 2pm a new crowd of about 60 tourists marched by on their way to the town square. I drank my beer, watched them go by and smiled at how packed the church I’d sat in almost alone earlier in the morning must be. It was clearly time to go home. I suspect the last boats of the day get uncomfortably crowded. But I remained ahead of the rest, and was back at Venissa enjoying a spritz before the crowd would have left Torcello abandoned once again.
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