![]() ![]() In this quieter, less crowded world, mapped out by fifty-odd parish churches, he focuses on the wealth of detail which personalizes each cluster of campi and calli. As a walker in the city he loves to share his passion for the deeper townscape beyond Piazza San Marco, the Doge’s Palace and the Rialto. ![]() This distinctive world of ‘village Venice’, a unique urban narrative with the sestieri as its chapters, fascinates Jonathan Keates, a noted expert on matters Venetian and currently chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund – and a companion of staggering erudition on many matters historical, literary and artistic. Such robust individuality is mirrored by Venice’s history as a place of cultural ‘firsts’ in everything from the invention of the portable printed book and opera as a public art form to the use of forks at the dining table. Yet each of its districts, the seven sestieri represented by the prongs of the metal forcola on a gondola’s prow, has its own indelible character and identity. A walk from Piazzale Roma in the west to Sant’Elena on its eastern edge takes barely an hour. For all its abiding grandeur, Venice is a small city. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |