Venice Aflame: Sunset Last Night

I promise you, Dear Reader, that I have not decided to turn this into the Venezia Sunset Blog--though it has occurred to me that someone (not me) could easily take a sunset photo every evening from a single location here and at the end of a year perhaps end up with a fairly interesting series--but I just wanted to post a series of images taken last night. The above panorama was taken at 8 pm, the one just below at 8:07, the bottom image at 8:10; the light seems to change almost second by second as the sun vanishes.

The days have been sunny and quite breezy (when not downright windy) for the last few days, and the latter has kept the smog from settling over the mainland and given the whole city a high-def look. The breezes have not, however, blown all the clouds away, and in the evening especially they tend to compose themselves to great operatic effect--like some last rousing Verdi chorus to ring down the curtain on the day.

The city, or the Dolomiti behind it, aflame