Venice Day Two

Teatro Olimpio by Andrea Palladio

Venice Day Two- Saturday March 20^th 2010

Looking back on today, I think it had to be one of the best days of my life. Maybe… I don’t know. I got up around 8 and ate the usual European hotel breakfast at the reception area. I was surprised to see another group of American students in the same hotel as us… there had to be at least 50 of them. After breakfast we met our tour guide, Giovanni Damiani, in piazza San Marco for guided tour, which was going to last all day.

Piazza San Marco

The piazza originated in the 9^th century as a small area in front of the original St. Mark’s Basilica. It was enlarged to its present size and shape in 1177, when the Rio Batario (a water stream which had bounded it to the west) and a dock (which had isolated the Doge’s Palace from the square) were filled in. The rearrangement was the meeting of Pope Alexander III and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The piazza has always been seen as the center of Venice. It was the location of all the important offices of the Venetian state, and has been the seat of the archbishopric since the 19^th century. The Piazza is dominated by the Basilica, the Doge’s Palace and the Campanile, which stands apart from it.

San Marco Basilica (1050-1094)

The first St. Mark’s was a temporary building in the Doge’s Palace, constructed in 828, when Venetian merchants stole the supposed relics of Saint Mark the Evangelist from Alexandria. This was replaced by a new church on its present site in 832; from the same century dates the first St. Mark’s Campanile (bell tower). The new church was burned ina rebellion in 976, rebuilt in 978 and again to form the basis of the present basilica since 1063. The basilica was consecrated in 1094, the same year in which the body of Saint Mark was supposedly rediscovered in a pillar by Vitale Falier, doge at the time. The building also incorporates (now housing St. Marks treasure), believed by some to have been part of the original Doge’s Palace. Within the first half of the 13^th century the narthex and the new façade were constructed, most of the mosaics were completed and the domes were covered with higher wooden, lead-covered domes in order to blend in with the Gothic architecture of the redesigned Doge’s Palace.

Honestly, I thought the tour and the tour guide were kinda boring. The guide had been living in Venice for 15 years, so you could imagine he knew the area quite well, but reagardless, he was no scholar. His vocabulary was very limited, and I found him going on tangents a lot, even losing his train of thought at times. He did put the city into terms we could understand, and describe the living conditions quite well. Walking through Venice, one would find many of the buildings to be vacant. Many of the people have moved out since the classic era, and living conditions, along with the recessed economy, have made living in Venice quite difficult. Venice is moreso a tourist city, and so most of the money comes from the tourists. In the off season, it is rather hard to survive, and so many people move out. The cost of living is quite high, and transportation is rather hard- you have to walk everywhere.

For the second part of the tour the group I was with- there were about 6 of us, got separated from the rest and so we couldn’t be there for the rest of the tour. No worries, it was boring and the people who did go said it was pointless anyways. So we grabbed lunch- 2 slices of pizza and a orange fanta, and walked back to the hotel, which took longer than we anticipated. We got kinda lost and had to buy a map to find our way back. The streets in Venice are not gridded. Instead, they are random, sometimes leading you to dead-ends or canals with no outlet. So finding our way back was very hard.

Santiago Calatrava- The Fourth Bridge on the Grand Canal

The bridge connects the train station with Piazzale Roma, and I found it very cool. I did not get to see it on the tour, but I did get to see it on the way to the hotel on the first day. After years of construction delays and cost overruns, Venice at last has a fourth bridge across the Grand Canal. The bridge’s prefabricated sections were floated to the construction site by barge. The bridge was finally open to the public in 2008, eleven years from its conception. The new bridge is a long, sweeping curve of glass and steel that is designed to compliment both the historic buildings on the Piazzale Roma side of the canal and the 1950s modernity of Venice’s main railway station.

Well, that’s enough facts… just kidding. Next we went across Venice to Junghans area- which is a more modern approach to Venice, where we looked at a modern apartment complex.

Junghans Area- Masterplan by Cino Zucchi

Described by the architect as “a sort of microsurgery within the delicate body of city,” the mix of renovations and new buildings creates new open spaces that create new connections in the fabric, via alternately large and small gestures. The five residential buildings here consist of both new construction and renovations, each named rather dryly as a letter at the beginning of the alphabet. This concluded our tour for the day… finally! Im not saying the architecture was bad.. in fact, it was rather good. But one did have to walk pretty far to see any modern architecture.

After the tour we went to Billa, which is the only grocery store we found in the entire city. We bought wine that wasn’t 20 euros a bottle like everywhere else- but was actually 2 euros. When we got back from Billa I took a shower and went to Jen and Jackies room where Barb was and we ate apples and snacks and started drinking a little bit before more people began showing up. Later on, Gabe, John, and Jared jumped into the canal. Which is probably the worst idea in the world considering how dirty and gross the canal is. I contemplated jumping in but then I realized that I don’t want to get a bunch of diseases from it so I stayed clean. All in all, the night was very fun… and being the students we are we all stayed in and drank rather than go out.. yeah I know we’re pretty cheap. But I had fun hanging out with everyone before I passed out in my room.