Venice, one of the world’s top-tier great cities, is unique for the well-known canals and waterways that are its ‘streets’. Who hasn’t seen the gondola photos?

The city, which sits on a peninsula of the Adriatic sea, and is comprised of islands and canals, is an internationally famous tourist attraction. Moreover, it is the site of the world-class Venice Film Festival, which attracts visitors from every continent (with the possible exception of Antarctica) for its theatrical, cultural, cinematic, artistic, and musical productions.

Sitting on the red bench are two internationally renowned personalities of the film industry. Unfortunately, we are legally proscribed from revealing their identities in this space. (Perhaps you will recognize them?)

All transportation in Venice consists of gondolas, motorboats, and barges. Venice is actually sinking, which is just another way of saying that the water level is rising. Global warming clearly is not helping that situation. Ancient residents of the city already experienced this, and their solution was to keep rebuilding Venice on higher and higher islands. The prognosis is not good: some scientists are predicting that by 2028 the city will be uninhabitable (except for fish).

We have already mentioned the gondolas. But the gondoliers also deserve special mention. (The vessels don’t propel *themselves* across the water, after all.) Taken together, those two mainstays of Venetian life are probably the cities most highly recognized symbol. The gondolier profession is often transmitted from father to son — or daughter, as the case may be: the first woman gondolier appeared in the city in 2009, and is now fully licensed. It is the asymmetrical shape of the gondola that allows the gondolier to guide it with but one oar. Some of the canals are so narrow that two oars are just not a viable option.

 

The Bauer Hotel in Venice is definitely where you want to stay — if you have the means, that is. A generally unaccepted and wholly unfounded supposition is that the Bowery (notwithstanding alternate spelling) of lower Manhattan took its name from that famous hotel, although the nature of that connection is not entirely clear.

Among notable Bauer clients is Madonna (you know, THE Madonna, who also has roots of her own in Italy, evidently). For a more modern hotel experience, you could try Villa F, a separate and very different hotel which also happens to belong to Bauer. It is built on formally abandoned regal property. If your heart yearns to stay at Villa F, we enthusiastically encourage it, but only after a careful reading of our first paragraph about Bauer, above (keyword: «means») which you should insert here as well, but with yet greater intensity.

The Bauer Hotel, which stands in the Saint Mark’s Square, also features a humble replica of the Statue of Liberty.  Another salient feature of that square is the presence of numerous pigeons — who’ve been having a harder time getting along, however, since Venice banned in 2008, under penalty of law, the feeding of those pigeons.

 

Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725.  On a somewhat higher plane we must mention Antonio Vivaldi who gave the world, among scores (pun intended) of other musical compositions, «The Four Seasons».  And Marco Polo, for whom Venice’s airport is named. Titian, the artist, died in Venice 1576 of the plague; he was found, rather dead, but still clutching a paintbrush between his fingers, and was buried in a Venice cathedral. (There are not too many conventional cemeteries in Venice, as you understand. Although the opportunities to be «buried at sea» are quite numerous.)

Venice was a favorite abode of Russian writers and poets — Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky, for prime example. He wrote some forty poems about Venice, in addition to his diaries that include important information about the Venice of his time. Josef Brodsky, another renowned Russian writer of the more recent period, is also buried in Venice.

Needless to say, our photos can afford but a faint hint of the marvels that flow in and around Venice, awaiting _you_.  It also goes without saying (but let us say it) that Venice should be very high on your list of must-see-very-soon destinations. (That is, while scuba gear is still an optional, not mandatory appurtenance for avid sightseers.)