Tuesday, 24 October, The Doge's Palace, the Murano showroom, Splendid Venice

Written 27 March 2024

Some good features to this breakfast. For example, much better crusty bread than we've been getting and real demisel butter, though in foil-wrapped pats. Not as good as ad lib, but way better than the little sealed plastic tubs.

I don't actually remember what was served in these two kettles, but judging from a photo (not shown here) of my plate, I'd guess scrambled eggs and bacon.

At the right is the cake, doughnut, and tiramisu assortment. Note the strawberry tiramisus thrown in among the usual coffee ones.

The cold cuts included lovely smoked salmon and mortadella. Behind them, on the other side of the table, you can see three more types of cold cut: raw ham, cooked ham, and salami, I think.

Here's the hotel's little boat landing, just outside the sliding glass doors in the lobby of "our" building. At its open end, it has steps down to the water, but you can also see the swinging wooden gate for entry into boats that pull up alongside.

From the landing, I took this photo of the small bridge that forms the continuation of the Calle de Regina, the alley that separates "our" building from the hotel's other building.

At 9 am, we formed up in the lobby and set off back to the Piazza San Marco for our tour of the Doge's Palace. Though David was still feeling pretty crummy, he bestirred himself to join the group for this tour. At the left is the view down the small leg of the piazza to the grand canal. The long façade on the right-hand side is the Doge's Palace, and in the distance, to the right of it, you can see the two tall columns, one bearing the winged lion and the other St. Ted and his crocodile (just above the right-most white umbrella). Even farther away, to the left of the lion's column, is the square brick campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore, across the water.

I've given up on my "raincoat" and gone over to borrowing those huge umbrellas that hotels keep on hand for use by their guests. They've worked pretty well, except that some of the alleys we walk through are barely wide enough to accommodate them.

You can also see that the raised walkways have been set up, though water hasn't pooled in the piazza yet.

Before we actually entered the palace, our local guide paused in a covered loggia one floor above piazza level to give us some random background on Venice. For example, the first bridge over the grand canal was the Rialto, built in the late 16th century, and until the 18th century, it was the only one.

The left-hand photo shows a diagram she held up showing the layer of piles (down by her fingernails) topped by layers of gravel and brick, and finally the foundations of buildings.

The right-hand photo is of a grimacing mask whose mouth is the slot for the deposition of "denontie secrete," secret denunciations. In the time of the doges, that was the opportunity to report wrong-doing by ones fellow citizens. The denunciations were secret, but they were not anonymous. Each one had to be signed by the accuser and bear the signatures of two witnesses. This loggia originally had winged lions carved on the walls, but when Napoleon came, he had them all chipped off.

The lower levels of the city's government included 2000 magistrates. You could become a magistrate at age 25, but only if (a) noble and (b) male. You held the position for 12 months. Magistrates had to wear red every day, whether in session or not, so if you did something bad wearing red, you were in worse trouble than the average.

To be reelected to the same position, you had to wait four years, but for a different position, you run again immediately. The doge was much more like a president than a king. Venice was a republic from the time it was founded (25 March 421 AD).

Over the centuries 126 successive doges held the office. When a doge died, the family had three days to move out to make way for the new one. Doges had to give up their businesses—put them in a blind trust—just like American president. The position was considered a burden, not a reward. Each doge had six advisors, one from each district of the city. And when a doge died, if he had not fulfilled the promises in his vow, his family could be fined.

Once we finally went inside, we climbed the "golden staircase, named for its gilded ceiling. According to the information panel next to it, this was the ceremonial staircase leading to the doge's apartments and the chambers were the various governing bodies met. Here, you can see only the first flight. At the top, it divides, and the flight to the right leads to the doge's apartments.

Starting in 1483, the building was damaged by a series of fires, the worst of which was in 1577, and it was tough for me to keep track of what we saw that dated from before the first and what had to be redone after, but as I understand it, the wing nearest the piazza was pretty well gutted and had to be rebuilt—that's why its façe;ade is so coherent and uniform. But apparently the façade is the only uniform part. The whole wing is crooked, and the floors slope toward the courtyard.

I also have a hard time reconstructing from my notes and photos just which art was in which room, as well as what each room was used for. I know Antecollegio led to the Collegio, where there was a stage at one end of the room, on which the doge and his six advisors (the "Synodia") sat. I know there was a very large room—50 x 25 m, the size of an olympic swimming pool—where the 2000 magistrates met, sitting on nine long rows of benches. And there was a Senate of something like 200 members. And a "Chamber of the Council of Ten" (ten who?). And it all shifted and changed over the centuries.

Anyway, in one of those splended rooms was this painting by Titian. I know it survived the fire because the guide explained that it's the only painting in this room that did. It seems Titian was always late—never finished his commissions on time. This painting was due in 1574, but it wasn't finished and therefore hadn't been delivered when the room was burned in 1577. The woman embracing the cross embodies Faith. The guy to the left of her, with the lion at his feet, is St. Mark, and the other guy is Doge Antonio Grimani. Despite being excommunicated seven times, Venetians never gave up trying to demonstrate their loyalty to the church, if not to the pope.

I know the paintings in the right-hand photo were in the Antecollegio, because I happened to catch its explanatory panel in the image. The guide explained that these paintings are on hinged panels behind which art and documents were hidden.

We saw several clocks in the various rooms. The one at the left here has only one hand and is divided into 24 hours. Hour 24 is where we would expect to see hour 9, and in addition, it runs what we would consider counterclockwise.

The one at the right is divided only into signs of the Zodiac. New Year's Day was 25 March, of course, so Ares was the first sign. The clock was running late though; it should be Scorpio already.

The ceilings were painted mainly by Tintoretto and Veronese (after the fire). Here are two views of the ceiling in the largest room we visited (the magistrates' room, maybe).

The guide told us that, although the ceilings were mostly flat, to provide space for all those paintings (which were done on canvas, then affixed to the ceiling; all the frescoes were destroyed by the fire), the roof is supported by "naval engineering." I assume she meant they were essentially inverted ships' hulls, like so many of those we've seen on tours in Europe.

At one end of a very large room was what is supposed to be the world's largest painting on canvas (left), by Tintoretto, encompassing 500 people on that canvas, including Tintoretto's self portrait. He had to paint many separate canvases and splice them together to make the giant one. It's apparently mentioned in Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. I think the guide also said that Tintoretto's daughter is in there. She dressed as a man so she could move around the city freely, and he painted her that way.

The right-hand photo is a close-up of a detail near the bottom. The guide told us that the painting includes several goofs and that the easiest to spot was the left foot resting on a gray surface near the lower right corner of my photo. Apparently, if you study the painting closely, you see that it's at the end of the right leg of the right-most figure. Experts think the mistake was made during restoration after some damage rather than in the original.

The tour even included some Hieronymus Bosch paintings!<.p>

Here's a third clock, divided into just six hours and running clockwise. I think the guide said it was something to do with the schedule of daily meetings.

And I think these lacquered cabinets (right) are the ones where they kept the rolls and records of families.

In a room I didn't get very good photos of portraits of the first 77 doges formed a frieze just under the ceiling, each with a scroll below saying who they were and what they did. The one blank one was for the doge who was beheaded; it would be a reminder to the others to be careful. Up to that point in time 90% of doges did not die a natural death. And the "normal" punishment for wrongdoing by a doge was being blinded. This custom, the guide assured us, has nothing to do with "Venetian blinds."

In the room of the Council of Ten (the doge, his six counselors, and three judges maybe?), there were actually 17 seats in a curved apse. The fourth from the left was a secret door leading to the torture chamber upstairs. The guide mentioned that three judges "adjusted the law" as appropriate to the situation. You could get your tongue cut out for swearing.

Clerks were in little mezzanines between floors, recording everything and keeping it secret.

In the torture chamber, they had a crane. They wuold ;tie your hands behind your back and attach a rope, then lift you by that rope. Every now and then, they would drop you a couple of feet so that your shoulders dislocated and/or your arms broke.

Giacomo Casanova, who called the council the "dreadful 10," was imprisoned here, for being a spy for the French, right before the French Revolution. He was kept in a small attic cell up under the leads of the east wing's roof, in darkness; he could barely stand up (but then he did stand almost seven feet tall). He was never told the charges against him.

In one corner of council's room was a sort of wooden cabin with two doors. Prisoners weren't told the verdict of their trials until they were directed through one of the doors. One let to safety and the other to torture. They were switched often.The room's ceiling is mainly by Veronese. The Louvre has the original central roundel—Napoleon took it—so what we saw was a copy. Veronese is described as a Mannerist, like Michelangelo. The paintings feature a lot of movement and a lot of clash between light and dark.

At part of the tour, we got to walk through the Bridge of Sighs and back again. When prisoners were walked over or back, their family members would sometimes gather in boats underneath for a last glimpse before they disappeared for good into the prison. You can't really see in through the windows from outside, but the prisoners had a chance of a tiny glimpse looking out.

So as their families sighed below, the prisoner's sighed as they got what could be their last glimpse of daylight before being locked away forever.

At the right is a nice shot of the exterior of the bridge that I got during the previous day's gondola ride.

As we made our way out of the palace, the guide continued to regale us with endless information. For example, the traditional metal prow of each gondola is loaded with symbolism. The top is the doge's hat; six bars represent the six districts, and the curve is the Grand Canal. Who knew? I didn't get a good photo of one, but if you just Google "gondola prow," you can surely turn up an image.

Also Venetian terrazzo, a flooring material that is still used today, is conceived to be flexible, but it has been replaced in most homes by wooden parquet.

The guide dated Venice's decline in power and prestige from 1492, not because of Columbus's exploits but because of the advancing Ottoman empire. Venice had to fight to keep dominion in the Mediterranean. In addition, when Portugal circumnavigated Africa to reach asia, Venice lost the pepper market.

The Ottomans never actually ruled Venice, but they crowded it badly. Then in 1797, Napoleon showed up. He besieged the city and conquered it, and Venice became French. The Doge's Palace became the seat of the French army. I think she said Napoleon even built on another wing. After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, it became part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Finally, in 1866, Venice joined Italy.

As we left the palace, returning to the piazza, the guide pointed through an archway into the interior courtyard of the palace to show us this stairway, flanked by statues of Mars and Neptune, at the top of which each new doge was in augurated—the guide actually said "crowned."

Also, on returning to the piazza, we found that the aqua alta had started. It's hard to see in the right-hand photo, of a drain in the piazza, but water is bubbling up through the four holes to pool on the ground. It continued to do so for some time after I took the photo. The drains are designed to be freely reversible; otherwise, water from the lagoon would just pile up until it spilled over the sills at the waterfront and pour suddenly into the piazza. When the water level drops again, e.g., when the rain stops and the engineers open the floodgates protecting the lagoon at low tide to let the rain water out, the drains drain the piazza.

At this point, David left us to return to the hotel. Because he was going straight back and didn't plan to go out again, he just sloshed through the ankle deep water (soaking his shoes and pantlegs) to take the most direct route to the blue clock and the route home. The rest of us joined crowds of the people on the raised walkways that skirted the piazza. Unfortunately, the walkways are the width of a smallish sidewalk, with just enough room for single-file foot traffic in each direction. And because everybody, including me, had their umbrellas open, it was a constant over-and-under-and-tip-to-the-side juggling act to get past each other.

Street vendors in high-top galoshes were wading around selling not just the flimsy plastic ponchos you always see in rainy tourist venues but flimsy plastic, knee-high, elastic-topped shoe covers, for those who preferred just to ignore the puddles and forge ahead.

Our tour did not include time for a trip to Murano Island, but the glass-makers there have formed a consortium and maintain a joint showroom near the piazza, which we toured between the Doge’s Palace and lunch. Unfortunately, photography was not permitted except in the gift shop and glass-blowing demonstration room.

At the left here is a wall of glass objets d'art, and at the right a tray of beads and pendants for sale in the gift shop. I would have liked a bead as a souvenir, but I wasn't going to spend 35 euros on a bead.

We watched a salesman's pitch, peddling drinking glasses with matching pitchers. He showed us one set of six wine glasses (and decanter) that were elaborately hand-etched and filigreed with 24-karat gold, which he assured us would not come off with wear (it has to be 24 k, he said, 18 or 14 won't do). They aren't making that pattern any more, and the set costs 2000 euros. Another set was only 1,180 euros. I found the decorations far too busy.

He also showed us confetti-colored glasses like those in our restaurant in Florence. My initial reaction was "hideous," but I would now modify that to "appropriate for a child's birthday party or a picnic." But they, too, cost the earth! He even intentionally bobbled one, so that it dropped a couple of inches onto the counter, to make the crowd gasp and to demonstrate that although not unbreakable, Venetian glass is very strong. Each piece is engraved discretely with the Murano logo and optionally with the purchaser's initials and the purchase date.

The prices include shipping by UPS and free replacement of any pieces broken in transit. You could get one glass for 150 euros. Shipping is 80 euros minimum whther you buy one glass or four, but with six, it's free.

Instead of silver filigree, they now use platinum. They use no lead in drinking glasses or dishes, but they use it for the glass in big sculptures and chandeliers. The solid spotted blasses can go in the dishwater, but the ones with gold leaf or platinum on them and stemware can't.

He claimed they have pieces priced from 10 euros 1.2 million, but I didn't see anything cheaper than 35. Surprisingly, members of our group bought a bunch of stuff!

Next, we got to watch a demonstration by a master craftsman, who made first an elegant blown-glass pitcher and then a unicorn figurine. After finishing each one, he touched a sheet of paper to it, demonstrating that the paper instantly burst into flame—they stay really hot, even after they cool and harden enough to stand up on their own. Then he tossed each back into the melting pot, because the glass-makers are not allowed to produce glass items on the “mainland” of Venice. The reason they were all moved to Murano to begin with was the danger of fire from their amazingly hot ovens. They have a special dispensation to maintain this one small one for demonstration purposes only. Besides, he explained, they don’t have an annealing oven on the mainland, in which to cool the pieces slowly. Left to cool at room temperature, large pieces would crack spontaneously before cool enough to touch.

He also told us that Venetian glass has been produced for over 1000 years. When you live on sandbars, one thing you have is sand, the principal ingredient in glass. They add minerals to produce color: manganese for amber, potassium for green, cobalt for blue. The most expensive has actual gold in it. These days they have trouble replacing master glass makers as they retire.

We were then free to wander the many, many rooms full of objects for sale, before heading off on our own to find lunch. I looked at all of it, and I was frankly surprised to find so little that was to my taste. I'm a devoted fan of the art glass produced by, e.g., Daum Frères, Lalique, and Gallé, but that's not what Murano does. I found their glass animals cartoonish, and their glass plants worse. A lot of it seemed garish. But I did see some things I liked: In the lobby stood a life-size Chinese horse made of greenish pête de verre (glass paste, usually cloudy to opaque, solid, and molded by hand rather than blown). I liked a couple of the glass aquaria stocked with glass fish, grass, jellyfish, and columns of bubbles, but I would have liked them better if the fish were more realistic rather than fanciful. A couple of glass violins caught my eye, one iridescent and the other with colored swirls through it; they were solid glass, though, ornamental but not functional.

Possible souvenirs I looked at included tiny millefieore pendants, the size of a dime (45 to 85 euros each), little jellyish paperweights (jellyfish lend themselves well to portrayal in glass; 55 euros), and tiny, tiny stud earrings (35 euros a pair), but I found them all overpriced.

For lunch, I went to a nearby restaurant called RossoPomodoro, supposedly Neapolitan, recommended by Anna. I take the name to mean "Tomato Red," as opposed to "Red Tomato," which would be Pomodoro Rosso.

I accordingly ordered the quintessential Neapolitan pizza—margherita. At the right is what I got—tomato sauce, cheese, and exactly one basil leaf. Further, the tomato sauce was so wet that an actual puddle of water formed on the plate under the center of the pizza. It was tasty enough, and I ate it, even though the center was so soggy.

I'm sure I had "tourist" written all over me, and Anna assured us that Venetian restaurants unabashedly present one menu and set of prices to tourists and a different menu, with lower prices, to locals. Fair enough. I would gladly pay the tourist prices for the local food, but I don't know how to convey that, without actually learning Italian well enough to ask fluently.

Then I headed back to the hotel to rest my feet and dry out a little before our farewell dinner.

At 5:15 pm, the Tauck group gathered in the hotel lobby for a farewell "aperitivo"—drinks and munchies before setting off for dinner.

at 6:15 pm, Anna led us (except David, who chose to have a quiet supper at the hotel) off to Antico Martini, our restaurant or the evening. We passed through the Piazza San Marco (left), still wet and glittering from the rain, though the aqua alta had gone back down. The photo was taken from the "foot" of the larger leg of the piazza, looking back along its length to the cathedral and its bell tower.

At the right is the Teatro La Fenice (the Phoenix Theater), an opera house opened in 1792. It's called that because it rose from the figurative ashes of a lawsuit that forced its owners out of their previous venue, but it has in fact burned down and been rebuilt (in the 1990's). It has figured in much of the history of theater and opera in Venice, and major works by well-known composers were often premiered there. It faces on the same little square as Antico Martini.

On the walk to the restaurant, Anna told us more interesting things:

• An espresso costs 7.50 euros if served to you at a table, but it's cheaper if you drink it standing at the bar.
• Many businesses have little slots on either side of their doors, near the bottom, into which they can slide rectangular plates when high water is expected. That way, they can keep the doors open but the water out. Customers just step over them.
• Venetian houses never have bedrooms or even carpeting on the ground floor.
• She recommends City of Falling Angels by John Berendt (author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) about Venice and about the fire that destroyed the theater.

Here we are at the restaurant, which sits at right angles to the theater (the white building at the right-hand edge of the photo is the edge of the theater). It's been here since 1720 and is a charter member of the Association of Historic Restaurants.

At the right, we're nside, at our dinner tables, in the Cherubini room. Anna pointed out the chandeliers, clusters of hanging illuminated cones, which are original Fortuny silk. Our hotel has similar ones, but theirs are modern glass.

Note also the paintings, by Giuseppe Cherubini (1867–1960). I think they were done in the 1920's.

Despite its historical nature, the restaurants offers a pretty modern cuisine, but we didn't see the full menu. Because our dinner was included and prearranged, we got three courses, with two choices of starter, four of main course, and two of dessert. I passed up Caprese salad to start with the tasty vegetable strudel shown at the left.

For the main course, I chose not eggplant Parmesan, penne pasta with seafood, or sliced sirloin steak but grilled filet of sea bass (my old buddy Dicentrarchus labrax) with lime and sautéed veggies.

I would have liked tiramisu for dessert, but I didn't dare risk the coffee, so I had plain vanilla gelato. My neighbor at the table asked for all three flavors—vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio.

Then it was a leisurely stroll back to the hotel. We were scheduled to leave for the airport at 7:45 am, so I just finished packing and went to bed.