at St Mark's Square, built in 1177. America was discovered in 1492...
Campanile Belltower, built sometime in the 900's then
repaired due to an earthquake in the early 1,500's, and then rebuilt in 1912. Firemen
("guardie del fogo") promptly ring the bells for any fire in town and the surface used to be covered with
reflectors making the bell towers similar to light houses.
tile floor in a public bathroom in Venice!
built in 1309 to 1424!
Bartolomeo Buon. The first Doge was Paolo Lucio
Anafesto (697AD) and the last was Ludovico Nanin (1789).
in Venice, Italy.
things that everybody else was drinking. Oops, it was
a blood orange "spritzer".
lunch but Sue didn't care. She was bubbly for hours.
about a hundred years old! Wow!
the Bricole and Paline. These are poles build out of Acacia wood,
which is nearly indestructible.
Those that stand alone are called palina
and those that are held together in groups of 3 or more are
called bricola. These poles set the boundary between navigable
canals and shoals, and have been in use since 1439.
Some are decorated with family symbols and many are named.
pink glass in the "ferai" electric lights which have
been used since 1887. There are 835 of these lights in
Venice. The Codega, hired light carriers, used to escort people with pork oil fueled lights before the use of electricity.
Regina Margherita" has been in service since 1881,
are slow moving and as such, are a great way to see
the city without wearing your legs, knees, and feet out. They offer a nice scenic rest between walks. It is
fun taking the vaporetto from Lido to Venice each
morning listening to the conversations (in Italian)
of the commuters and students, all wearing ski hats
and ski coats, each with their own back pack. They tend to wear their packs very low in their backs with
very long shoulder straps. Nearly everybody smokes.
symbol of Venice for over a thousand years! In ancient times, the gondola was a means for connecting various parts of the city that, at those times, had more canals and less bridges. Elegant, silent, once provided with a cabin “Felze”. It is now open but still painted in black, in compliance with an ancient decree of the Serenissima Republic (1633). It is 11 metres long and has a slightly asymmetrical line, with a flat bottom to allow the gondoliere to manoeuvre it with a single oar and to navigate on shallow canals. The oar is held in a characteristic lock called fórcola, which is removed when using the oar. The dolfin (iron in front of the boat), instead, is used to balance the boat and represents the six Sestieri, including Giudecca and the Doge’s hat. The stern iron is called rìsso (riccio – curl) Assembling its 280 wood pieces of different types, may require up to one year’s work.
The "bridge of sighs" or
"ponte dei sospiri", from a gondola.
Here - on Google.
You can see a view like this every few minutes
while walking around Venice. Each of the
buildings is hundreds and hundreds of years
old. It is like going back in history for
all of your senses.
designed by Antoni Contino
in 1600, where prisoners would walk from the
courtroom in the Doge's palace to the prison.
