After breakfast we followed the not-yet-big crowds over the Rialto Bridge, toward San Marco, coming out under the clock tower on the north side of the Piazza. We went into the Doge's Palace ticket office and I exchanged our voucher for three tickets and three red stickers with the winged lion of Venice and the words "Palazzo Ducale Itinerari Segreti." We were here a little early for the English-language "Secret Itineraries" tour of the Palace, so we did a little passeggiata of the Piazza and the adjoining Piazzetta ("Little Piazza").
The Piazza San Marco is a large, rectangular square, bordered on three sides by arcades buildings and on the third by the Basilica of St. Mark. The original patron saint of Venice had been St. Theodore, but as, in the ninth century, the city became became richer and more powerful due to its position as Europe's principal entry port for goods from the East, the Venetians decided that they needed a more prestigious patron in heaven. What they did was steal one. Apparently, the custodians of the tomb of the evangelist St. Mark in Alexandria, where he had been martyred, were unhappy that the saint was under the jurisdiction of the Muslim rulers of Egypt, or else, more likely, they were bribed. As a result, Venetian merchants in Alexandria were able to take the saint's remains, getting them past the customs inspectors by hiding them in a barrel of pork. The mosaics on the Basilica, setting out this story, show turbaned inspectors, turning up their noses at this "unclean" meat. The medieval mosaics also show St. Mark saving the merchants from a storm at sea on their way back.
The Venetians demoted poor Theodore and took to Mark in a big way, building him the Basilica and adopting his winged lion as their emblem. Venice became a religious pilgrimage site in its own right, as well as being the principal transit port for pilgrims to the Holy Land. There are two tall columns in the Piazzetta, which is the much smaller square connecting the Piazza to the Grand Canal, between the Doge's Palace and the Campanile (bell tower). On one of the columns is the winged lion of St. Mark. On the other is St. Theodore, carrying a spear and standing on what looks like a crocodile.
We entered the courtyard of the Palace, showing our tickets an wearing our red stickers. Our guide gathered together her little group, gave us some preliminary information and some do's and don'ts (mostly the latter: no photos past the golden staircase; no leaning on any of the 16th-century walls, etc.), and we headed across the courtyard and up to the loggia or porch. On the wall there were three openings where Venetians could slip in pieces of paper denouncing others for crimes or violations of state security. Originally, these denunciations could be anonymous, but later three signatures were required, and if the accusation proved unfounded, the accusers would be subject to the same penalties that the accused would have received if convicted. Until Napoleon ended the Republic in 1797, there were 72 of these denunciation boxes around the city.
From the loggia we climbed the golden staircase (the gold leaf is on the ceiling, not on the steps), where visiting ambassadors and heads of state would ascend, like us, to the state rooms above.
The Doges or Dukes of the Most Serene Republic of Venice were elected for life, by a very complicated process, from the list of nobles inscribed in the Golden Book. After an attempted coup by one Doge in the early fourteenth century, their powers were strictly circumscribed and the office became more like that of the current Queen of England (head of state) than that of the current Prime Minister of Great Britain (head of government). Venice was the first European state to develop a full-scale bureaucracy, permanent embassies in other countries, and a network of spies. Venice was the wealthiest city in Europe until the late fifteenth century, when its decline began, due to Ottoman Turkish military might encroaching on their colonies in the eastern Mediterranean, and, even more, due to the end of their monopoly on trade in spices and silks from the Orient, when the Portuguese found the route around the southern tip of Africa. The Doge's Palace was not only the home of the Doge, but the place where all the other arms of the Republic's government met and worked: the Great Council, the Senate, the Council of Forty, the Council of Ten.
Our guide, instead of following the usual itinerary through the public state rooms, at the top of the stairs she opened an unassuming door opposite the one everyone else was going through, and we began our journey through the more hidden domains of Venetian justice and bureacracy. We saw the tiny office of one of the most powerful men in Venice (I forget his title), a commoner who was appointed for life (the only life office besides that of Doge) to make sure that no officer overstepped the limits of his office.
He was in charge of the office, which we also saw, where official documents were copied in triplicate. We saw where judges held secret trials and even the torture chamber. The only torture allowed was hanging people by their arms from ropes, and only to elicit confessions. The chamber was designed so that the cells of future torturers surrounded it, so that they could make a more informed decision as to whether they should confess or not.
But the centerpiece of the tour was the infamous prison, i Piombi, the Leads, called that because it was under the lead roof of the Palace. This made the cells very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. This was still better than the other prison, called the Wells, in the basement of the Palace: Venice has a high water table.
In all the history of the Leads, there was only one escape. The famous womanizer and con man, Giacomo Casanova, was arrested, apparently at the complaint of an angry husband, for having a forbidden book on magic (which he used to swindle people by pretending to have occult powers). He was sentenced to five years in the Leads, but after less than two years, he and a fellow prisoner, a priest, managed to cut some holes through ceilings and floors with the use of a piece of iron Casanova had found while allowed to take walks in the attic. They then simply walked out of the Palace when no one else was around. We were shown where these events happened.
At the end of our tour, we were left in the Room of Four Doors, where we had begun and where ambassadors and dignitaries were received. From there, Mary Joy, Marika and I were on our own, to follow the Not-At-All-Secret Itinerary that all the other tourists were doing, through the state rooms of the Palace.
There had been a fire in the building in the 1570s, not doing much structural damage, but destroying much of the decoration. As a result, the great Venetian painters of the time, particularly Tintoretto and Veronese, were commissioned to do dozens of paintings, glorifying Venice and past Doges. The latter were shown, generally, being presented by their heavenly friend and patron, St. Mark, to the Blessed Virgin or Christ, while other saints looked on approvingly. Barack Obama or Mitt Romney could take some campaign ideas from this. Instead of having celebrities endorse their candidacies, why not have God himself do it?
After taking us back and forth to the New Prison (not as climatically challenging as the Leads, or as waterlogged as the Wells, but designed to cram a number of prisoners into a small cell), across the famous Bridge of Sighs (so named by the Romantics, who pictured prisoners emotionally affected by their last view of Venice), we finally came to the Hall of the Great Council, at one time, I think I read, the largest room in Europe. Across one side stretches Paradise, as envisioned by the elderly Tintoretto, though mostly painted by his son. It is the longest canvas painting in the world. Tintoretto also painted, around the top of the chamber, the portraits of the early Doges. The traitor who tried to turn the Republic into a monarchy is conspicuously un-commemorated by a black veil painted where his face and name should be.
When we finished, we had been in the Palace for more than three hours, so we decided to look for a lunch place, on our way back to Al Campaniel. We had coffee at a place on the Campo Santa Maria Formosa, then worked our way over the Rialto Bridge to the Pescheria, the fish market, but the restaurant suggested by the guidebook was closed for August, so we retraced our steps, looking for a pizza shop that we had seen somewhere along the way. This turned out to have been all the way back, just across the bridge from Santa Maria Formosa. Mary Joy and I got pizza slices and Marika got a piece of a spinach and ricotta tart. We ate while sitting on the step of a boat landing along the canal, across from the church.
Then we went back over the Rialto Bridge and on to our B&B.
Not long afterwards, refreshed and cleaned up, we walked the few blocks to the Frari Church. This huge, fifteenth-century gothic church is best known for its altarpiece, a large painting of the Assumption of Mary, by Titian. This is beautiful and impressive, but we would have done better to visit the church in the morning, rather than in late afternoon: the light coming in through the western apse windows, behind the altar, made it more difficult to see the painting as well as it could be seen.
Then, we went to the railroad station. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to go to Piazzale Roma to start our cruise, since that is where the number 1 vaporetto starts its trip. In any event, we bought three twenty-four-hour vaporetto passes, at twenty euros apiece. We had previously avoided vaporetto travel on this trip, because the tickets, at seven euros apiece, are sufficiently pricy to make it worth one's while either to walk (Venice is small enough that you can walk everywhere, if you're in fairly good shape) or to buy a pass and cumulate your vaporetto trips during the validity period of that pass.
We boarded the number 1 vaporetto, which runs from Piazzale Roma to San Marco, and on to the Lido. This is recommended as a way to tour the complete length of the Grand Canal. Venice is a water city, but you don't get much of a feeling for that unless you go out onto the water. The neighborhoods are closed in on their campos, with only occasional glimpses of water as you go up and down the steps over the little bridges, or walk along a fondamenta (a street alongside one of the small canals). To cruise down the Grand Canal, stopping at all the vaporetto stops along the way, shows you how water ties the city together.
The whole ride took about forty-five minutes, letting us off at San Marco in time for the 6:45 mass. In a number of places, we've been to mass where the music was provided by a visiting foreign choir (perhaps the local choir, off for the summer as to their own church, is spending a few weeks touring somewhere else!). In this case, we were lucky to hear a very good English choir called Chorale Gaudeamus. They sang music by Bruckner and Brahms, among others.
After mass, we had five or ten minutes to look around the Basilica before they shooed us all out. The interior is covered with medieval mosaics, on a golden background.
Then we took the vaporetto to the Accademia, and walked from there to the Zattere, hoping to get a table on the over-water terrace of the restaurant Casin dei Nobili. They were full, however, and said we would have to wait if we wanted a table. We dithered some as to what to do, and another party was turned away and left, but after a few minutes, the host called us over and took us to a table right on the water. I forget exactly what we had to eat, but it was very good, and along with it we had a bottle of white Soave wine, in a bucket of ice water. It was very pleasant to spend our last evening with Marika in looking out at the lights along the Giudecca Canal, as a multitude of various watercraft passed by.
Afterwards, we returned to Al Campaniel, by way of Campo San Barnaba, a much more direct route than that we had taken from Nico the day before.
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