Day's End, Torcello (Yesterday)

'Tis the Season, or, Venetian Tidings

In the area around the church of San Giacometto, between the Rialto's Bridge and market, water was over an adult's knee at 9:40 am this morning

It's the acqua alta season in Venice and the tidings this year have made no residents glad, as an unprecedented number of what used to be considered exceptionally high tides have repeatedly flooded the defenseless city, causing more than a billion euros worth of estimated damages.

The total of five tides we've already had this season in excess of 140 cm is 3 more than the second highest number of such tides in any given year since 1872, and the overall frequency and intensity of the flooding is unparalleled. This morning's tide came in at 144 cm, a number which as recently as last year would have qualified as disturbingly high. But after a string of 140+ cm tides, it's gotten to the point that there was a certain amount of relief today because, well, at least it didn't hit 150. 

One could have shopped at the vegetable stalls of the Railto market without ever leaving one's boat

Campo San Giacometto (or San Giacomo di Rialto) submerged

Though never known for his beauty, the statue/pedestal known as "Il Gobbo"--atop which public announcements were proclaimed to what used to be the bustling hub of the Venetian Republic's expansive commercial empire--appeared to make like Narcissus in this morning's high tide....

While just a stone's throw away at the Osteria al Pesador, the Catch of the Day could quite literally have been caught while seated at one's table (appropriately enough, I suppose, as pesador is the Venetian word for fisherman).

But regardless of how high the water rose, deliveries still had to be made

Two Grotesque Portals

Some entrances, whether because of the door itself (as above) or the apartment bell pulls (as below), seem to promise that something other than an ordinary domestic interior awaits you inside.

Christmas Lights, Rio Fondeco dei Tedeschi

Cortile delle Scarpe

   
Cortile delle Scarpe is not the actual name of the small courtyard pictured above, but the odd pair of shoes were so precisely placed within it that they, not the little marble well in the center of the space, seemed to be the focus of the place, like relics on display, imbued with some indecipherable significance unavailable to a causal passerby who chanced into it, as I did. Set in the center of that ground floor, with its array of architectural shapes, its shattered orange plastic drain pipe, its coiled green hose, its wrought iron window bars, its bricked-in archway, the shoes (and even the broom and dustpan in the corner) seemed uncanny, like objects in a dream, inviting interpretation and resisting it in equal measure. 

Towers, Rowers, Birds, Late Saturday Afternoon

Piazza San Marco 1972; or, Pigeons, Painters and the Question of What Constitutes a Pest?

photo credit: Larry Castek

Today we're lucky to get a striking glimpse of the Venice of 47 years ago, courtesy of Larry Castek, during the era when pigeons still ruled Piazza San Marco.

John Berendt describes the city administration's unsuccessful and often clandestine attempts to control (and sometimes poison) its pigeon population in his best-selling book The City of Falling Angels, published in 2005.  In May of 2008 a law was finally passed which banned their feeding and put the 19 licensed vendors of feed out of business.

At the left of the photo you can see one such vendor in the act of filling a small paper bag of seed from a podium-sized green stand.

And just to the left of him, further in the background, you can see what looks to be a sizable canvas on an easel, with more canvases leaning against its legs. Was this someone licensed to sell his or her works in the piazza, or someone simply painting?

The unlicensed sales of paintings in the piazza has long been banned, but in the last couple of years so, too, has the mere painting of pictures. Artists long used to working there have been chased out by the police. There is no actual law against painting in the piazza, but local authorities have adopted a "zero tolerance" policy toward even the smallest of easels set up in the city's most famously picturesque space.

But though police now keep a watchful eye out for artists, on most sunny days it's not hard to find an illegal vendor or two of pigeon food....