Great Cities Through Travelers' Eyes

by Peter Furtado

  VENICE

  Arguably the most written-about city in the world, the unique situation and cityscape of Venice has fascinated travellers since the Middle Ages. Founded in the chaos of the last centuries of the Roman Empire when refugees from northern Italian cities hid from the Gothic invaders in the marshes of the Veneto, it used its impregnable situation to grow into a major maritime state. Its trading empire across the eastern Mediterranean challenged Byzantium, which it conquered during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, bringing many treasures back to Venice.

  Although its trading wealth declined from the 16th century, Venice replaced this by projecting itself as a cultural centre on the Grand Tour, and more generally for tourists and other visitors from Europe and further afield. Many great writers have been tempted to describe this uniquely atmospheric playground full of architectural glories.

  1438 PERO TAFUR

  The Castilian Pero Tafur (see page 141) visited Venice as part of his three-year journey around the Mediterranean. His account of Venice combines descriptions of the familiar architectural glories with travellers’ tales.

  The city of Venice is very populous, and there is much country round about it. The houses are built very close together. They say that there are 70,000 inhabitants, but the strangers and serving people, mostly slaves, are very numerous. The city has no walls, nor any fortress, except those two castles which enclose the harbour, since its defence lies in the sea. They draw a chain across from one side to the other so that they may be secure, and if the whole world came up against the city, the Venetians could sink a ship between the two castles in the canal and be safe.

  The city is built on the sea, and there are artificial canals along which the boats can pass, and in some parts there are streets where the people can go on foot. Elsewhere, in places where the canals are too narrow for ships, there are bridges, and as in Castile everyone has a beast to ride, so here they all have boats and pages to row and attend to them. And as we pride ourselves on a fine horse and a pretty well-dressed page, so they set great store by their boats, which are kept very properly. They are well hung and fitted with cabins and seats, so that one or two or more may travel in them.…

  There are many churches and monasteries in the city which are very rich and sumptuously built, among them the principal and greatest is the church of St Mark, which is the chief and head of all. It is built with domes in the Greek manner, covered with lead on the outside, with gilded cupolas. Inside, it is very finely decorated with rich golden mosaics. The floor also is decorated with similar mosaics, except that they are large and coloured. At the great door, high up over one of the arches, are four great horses of brass, thickly gilt. These the Venetians carried away and placed here in triumph when they took Constantinople. In front of this door is a great square, greater than the Medina del Campo, paved with bricks, and surrounded by many-storeyed houses with porticoes. They hold a market here every Thursday, which is greater than that of the Torre del Campo, a hamlet of Jaén in Castile. On one side of this square is a very high tower, as high as that in Seville, with a cross of fine gold on the top, a very beautiful thing to see. It can be seen in the sun at a distance of 80 miles away. In it are the bells which they ring, one for Mass, one for Vespers, one to summon the Council, which they call the Council Bell, and one when they arm the fleet, and each one is recognized by all. On another side of this square, facing the sea, are two very large and lofty columns. On the one is St George with the Dragon and on the other St Mark, the patron saint and the device of the city. These also were carried away from Constantinople. They say that no one could set them up, but a Castilian climbed up and raised and secured them, whereupon the Venetians ordered that he should have whatever he desired. He did not ask anything for himself, but round about the columns are certain steps, and he requested that if any criminal, whatever his offence, took refuge there, justice should not be executed upon him. And now rogues play there at dice and commit other knaveries, praising the man who secured them such immunity.

  Between these columns and the church of St Mark is the Palace of the Signoria, and in one part of it the Doge is lodged with his family, and the rest is open for anyone to see, as well as that great hall. Here they hold the Council. There are other halls, also very rich, where they administer justice and have their prison, and beneath the arches, over against the great square, are certain marble stones. Three are coloured, and there they hang the nobles, and the others are for hanging the common people. In these porticoes strangers leave their arms, and there are also some skins of the beasts called crocodiles which the Sultan of Egypt sent as things most monstrous to the Signoria. This palace is indeed very noble.…

  In times past there were few weeks, or even days, when the fishermen did not take out dead babies from their nets, and this, they say, came from the fact that the merchants were so long separated from their wives. These, urged by their fleshly lusts, gave way to them and became pregnant, and with intent to save their reputations threw the offspring out of window into the sea as soon as they were delivered, the place being aptly disposed therefor. The rulers, in view of such enormous crimes, took counsel together and founded a great and rich hospital, very finely built, and placed in it a hundred wet-nurses to suckle the babes, and now those who would hide their shame take their children there to be reared. The Venetians also obtained a Bull from the Pope that whosoever visited those children in hospital should gain certain pardons. Thus men and women can go there to visit their children, as if to gain pardons. Without doubt it was a very pious work, and it is held in great reverence.

  1494 PIETRO CASOLA

  Cleric Casola (see page 149) was held up in Venice while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, waiting for a ship to take him to the Holy Land.

  I must make my excuses to the readers of this my itinerary, if it should seem to them that I have overpraised this city of Venice. What I write is not written to win the goodwill of the Venetians, but to set down the truth. And I declare that it is impossible to tell or write fully of the beauty, the magnificence or the wealth of the city of Venice. Something indeed can be told and written to pass the time as I do, but it will be incredible to anyone who has not seen the city.…

  Indeed it seems as if all the world flocks there, and that human beings have concentrated there all their force for trading. I was taken to see various warehouses, beginning with that of the Germans – which it appears to me would suffice alone to supply all Italy with the goods that come and go – and so many others that it can be said they are innumerable. I see that the special products for which other cities are famous are all to be found there…. And who could count the many shops so well furnished that they also seem warehouses, with so many cloths of every make – tapestry, brocades and hangings of every design, carpets of every sort, camlets [fine woollen cloths] of every colour and texture, silks of every kind; and so many warehouses full of spices, groceries and drugs, and so much beautiful white wax! These things stupefy the beholder, and cannot be fully described to those who have not seen them.…

  As to the abundance of the victuals, I do not believe there is a city in Italy better supplied than this with every kind of victuals…. Whether it is due to the good order or other cause I do not know, but I never saw such a quantity of provisions elsewhere.

  I went to the place where the flour is sold wholesale; the world at present does not contain such a remarkable thing. When I saw such abundance and beauty around me I was confused. The bakers’ shops, which are to be found in one place specially, namely, the piazza of St Mark, and also throughout the city, are countless and of incredible beauty; there is bread the sight of which tempts even a man who is surfeited to eat again. In my judgment Venice has not its equal for this.…

  One thing only appears to me hard in this city; that is, that although the people are placed in the water up to the mouth they often suffer from thirst, and they have to beg good water for drinking and for cooking, especially in the summer time. It is true that there are many cis
terns for collecting the rainwater, and also water is sold in large boatloads – water from the river called the Brenta, which flows near Padua. In this way indeed they provide for their needs, but with difficulty and expense, and the people cannot make such a business of washing clothes with fresh water as is done elsewhere.

  1646 JOHN EVELYN

  English diarist and horticulturalist Evelyn (1620–1706) left England to avoid embroilment in the Civil Wars, spending several years in Italy. He returned to England in 1647 and set up house at Deptford, where he created a famous garden and continued to write his famous diary of personal and public events.

  In January, Signor Molino was chosen doge of Venice, but the extreme snow that fell, and the cold, hindered my going to see the solemnity, so as I stirred not from Padua till Shrovetide, when all the world repair to Venice, to see the folly and madness of the Carnival; the women, men and persons of all conditions disguising themselves in antique dresses, with extravagant music and a thousand gambols, traversing the streets from house to house, all places being then accessible and free to enter.

  Abroad, they fling eggs filled with sweet water, but sometimes not over-sweet. They also have a barbarous custom of hunting bulls about the streets and piazzas, which is very dangerous, the passages being generally narrow. The youth of the several wards and parishes contend in other masteries and pastimes, so that it is impossible to recount the universal madness of this place during this time of license. The great banks are set up for those who will play at basset [a popular card game]; the comedians have liberty, and the operas are open; witty pasquils [satirical verses] are thrown about, and the mountebanks have their stages at every corner.

  The diversions which chiefly took me up was three noble operas, where were excellent voices and music, the most celebrated of which was the famous Anna Rencia, whom we invited to a fish-dinner after four days in Lent, when they had given over at the theatre. Accompanied with an eunuch whom she brought with her, she entertained us with rare music, both of them singing to a harpsichord.

  It growing late, a gentleman of Venice came for her, to show her the galleys, now ready to sail for Candia [Venetian colony on Crete]. This entertainment produced a second, given us by the English consul of the merchants, inviting us to his house, where he had the Genoese, the most celebrated base in Italy, who was one of the late opera-band. This diversion held us so late at night, that, conveying a gentlewoman who had supped with us to her gondola at the usual place of landing, we were shot at by two carbines from another gondola, in which were a noble Venetian and his courtesan unwilling to be disturbed, which made us run in and fetch other weapons, not knowing what the matter was, till we were informed of the danger we might incur by pursuing it farther.

  1786 JOHANN VON GOETHE

  The German poet, scientist and statesman Johann von Goethe (1749–1832) visited Italy aged thirty-seven in 1786–88, and published his diaries, as Italian Journey, in 1816–17. In Venice he enjoyed acting as a typical tourist and used his scientific method to aid his understanding, although he also encountered great Renaissance art.

  28 September As the first of the gondoliers came up to the ship, I recollected an old plaything, of which, perhaps, I had not thought for twenty years. My father had a beautiful model of a gondola which he had brought with him from Italy; he set a great value upon it, and it was considered a great treat, when I was allowed to play with it. The first beaks of tinned iron-plate, the black gondola-cages, all greeted me like old acquaintances, and I experienced again dear emotions of my childhood which had been long unknown.

  29 September The large canal, winding like a serpent, yields to no street in the world, and nothing can be put by the side of the space in front of St Mark’s Square – I mean that great mirror of water, which is encompassed by Venice proper, in the form of a crescent. Across the watery surface you see to the left the island of St Georgio Maggiore, to the right a little further off the Giudecca and its canal, and still more distant the Custom House and the entrance into the Canal Grande where right before us two immense marble temples are glittering in the sunshine. All the views and prospects have been so often engraved that my friends will have no difficulty in forming a clear idea of them.

  After dinner I hastened to fix my first impression of the whole, and without a guide, and merely observing the cardinal points, threw myself into the labyrinth of the city, which though everywhere intersected by larger or smaller canals, is again connected by bridges. The narrow and crowded appearance of the whole cannot be conceived by one who has not seen it. In most cases one can quite or nearly measure the breadth of the street, by stretching out one’s arms, and in the narrowest, a person would scrape his elbows if he walked with his arms akimbo. Some streets, indeed, are wider, and here and there is a little square, but comparatively all may be called narrow.…

  6 October This evening I bespoke the celebrated song of the mariners, who chant Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing, of course, but rather belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, with one singer before and the other behind me. They sing their songs taking up the verses alternately.…

  Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or by the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating voice – the multitude admire force above everything – anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels far. Another in the distance, who is acquainted with the melody and knows the words, takes it up and answers with the next verse, and then the first replies, so that the one is as it were the echo of the other. The song continues through whole nights and is kept up without fatigue. The further the singers are from each other, the more touching sounds the strain. The best place for the listener is halfway between the two.

  To demonstrate this, my boatmen tied up the gondola on the shore of the Giudecca and walked along the canal in opposite directions. I walked back and forth, leaving the one who was just about to sing, and walking towards the other who had just stopped.

  For the first time I felt the full effect of this singing. The sound of their voices far away was extraordinary, a lament without sadness, and I was moved to tears.

  1825 THOMAS JEFFERSON HOGG

  The English lawyer Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1792–1862) was friend and biographer of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. He made a long trip in continental Europe in 1825–26, the published journal of which (entitled Two Hundred and Nine Days, 1827) includes some dyspeptic descriptions of places and officialdom, interspersed with warm accounts of the ordinary people he met.

  Sunday, 15 January As I looked from the window upon the Canal Grande, I thought that, although it is handsome, yet too much has been said in its praise; it is not very wide; the houses are neither large nor lofty, nor of very noble architecture. The celebrated Rialto is a good bridge; high in the middle, like the roof of a house; to be ascended and descended by steps; and, as the guidebooks say, adorned – but I should say, disfigured – by a double row of shops: it has long been a wonder, because it is a bridge over the great canal; we now wonder that it is the only bridge.

  After breakfast we sallied forth, crossed the Rialto, and wandered in a maze of courts and canals, in search of St Mark’s Place; thinking the effect would be more striking, if we could contrive to stumble upon it by accident than after a regular and formal introduction by a guide.… The other canals and bridges are mean, insignificant and ugly; we came to some fine points of view; and at last from a promontory, saw the tower and cupolas of St Mark’s on the opposite side of the Canal Grande; we puzzled out our way with difficulty to the Rialto and recrossing it we arrived at an arched gateway, on issuing from which we suddenly entered the Piazza S. Marco. The gaudy cathedral; the tall square brick tower; the columns, of which one is surmounted by the lion of St Mark; the three long masts, and the buildings and porticos; realized the paintings, engravings and panoramas which w
e had seen.

  We entered St Mark’s; it is chiefly remarkable for a certain air of barbaric and Eastern magnificence; the roof and the five cupolas are inlaid with gold mosaic; they seem as if they were lined with gilt leather; such at least is the ground, for there are figures upon it of all kinds, in bright gay colours. The pavement is also inlaid tastefully with coloured marbles, in various patterns; but by some accident it is very uneven, and as it were warped; and like everything else in this city, exceedingly slippery: the interior of the church is enriched with every kind of ornament.