Veniceblog

On Being Handicapped In Venice

I got an email this morning from a  woman in the UK who is suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, and who is trying to jam in as many trips as possible to her "favourite place on earth" before the disease no longer makes this possible. She'll go for the third time this year in November.

I wrote her the response below, but would love any other thoughts you might have on how to make Venice more accessible to those disabilities. Have any tips? Ideas? Resources? Stories? Do you know someone who is handicapped and has negotiated the bridges and skinny calles? Write me or comment.

My sister has had MS for some 25 years ... doing rather well with it, considering.

Because of her, because of all the elderly, minimally ambulatory Venetians, and because,  a few years ago, I lost the feeling on the bottoms of my feet, I began to think about what it might mean to lose access to the city I also love more than anywhere else on earth. (My foot problem, it turns out, is not MS or anything massively pernicious, but merely the result of a pesky spinal nerve compression ... an annoyance, nothing more).

I hope you never decide that it just isn't practical. I hope you always have Venice. As someone who lived there, I know that practically anything in Venice is inconvenient, it's just a matter of degree. Imagine what it means to bring home, say, a new bookshellf, or a piano. Or a Christmas tree. Or to take your boat to a restaurant.

To be clear, I'm not putting these logistical challenges in the same category as a trying to negotiate Venice with the kind of weaknesses MS can present. No question, it's a city that wants feet. But if you obsess on logistics (which can actually be kind of fun ... but then, I'm an obsessive puzzle solver), I know you can hammer Impracticality into Possible. Game it out. ID every bridge with handicap access (there's an office in the Venice city government with this and other info you'll need  ... see http://www.comune.venezia.it/handicap/nuovo/index.asp ... in Italian ... but it will still be useful). Trade tips with others who have disabilities. ID hotels or apartments with elevators that are located in zones with bridgeless (or handicap accessible bridge) access to vaporettos.

Your sphere will shrink if your mobility wanes, for sure. But don't fret. Venice is equally delicious eaten whole or in tiny slices. Some of my favorite days were spent simply sitting in miraculous, everyday campos beyond the tourist crush, debating the relative worthiness of different gelato flavors, watching kids play soccer, tracing the outline of a gothic window, and observing the parade of ordinary Venetian life.

In Venice, the "pedestrian" is anything but pedestian, even if you are not a pedestrian.

Good luck and let me know how things go.

Come Out

As fellow blog owners know, combing over your site statistics can be addictive. There's great stuff there for anyone with even a hint of obsessive compulsive disorder. I glance at  my stats at least once day.

One of the coolest things you can see is where people are from and how often they come back. This only works for a small fraction of the total number of visitors (mostly those who surf from their offices), but it can still  be intriguing. I have a group of about 50-60 or so people who regularly write me,  but there are many frequent readers I never hear from. Lurkers .... many who come from -- or work at  -- very interesting places.

It's time to come out.

I put together this little list drawn from the last week or so of visitors to Veniceblog. Check to see if you are on it. If you are, step out of the shadows and drop me a line at brancamenta@hotmail.com and write about yourself, your relationship to Venice, and anything else you'd like to tell this blogger (any ideas for stories, for example). Confidentially, if you like.

And hey, you don't have to be on the list to write (most frequent readers aren't ... 99% of the time, info is generally hidden by their ISPs). I love to hear from readers anytime.

THE LIST

The Supreme Court Of Canada (hmmm, surfing between decisions?)

Reed Elsevier (home of Lexis-Nexis, my fave info source)

Tiger Tigress Productions

Guideposts Associates

University of Warwick (looks like at least 3 different people)

Social Security Administration

The Comune di Venezia

John Wiley Sons

Loyola University

Access Tucson

Hawaii Dept. Of Education

Someone at Marymount Manhattan College

NASA

Perkins Coie

Syracuse University

Information Systems U.S. House Of Representatives

Reading Is Fundamental

Folks at Wake Forest University (looks like several people)

UK's Ministry Of Agriculture Fisheries And Food

Central European Environmental Data Request Facility

A&E TV

The Independant (Newspaper/UK)

The New York Times

The National Gallery, Scotland

Netscape Communications

The City Of Cedar Park, Texas

American Airlines

Reviews Trickle In: It’s Casanova in a Romp

The reviews look pretty positive for the out-of-competition debut of director Lasse Hallstrom’s Casanova at the Venice Film Festival. Do not expect an art film. Turns out it has precious little to do with actual history or high-voltage nookie-mongering. What we have instead is a rather broad comedy, or as the director himself puts it, ” the Disney version” of one of history’s randiest dudes.

Hallstrom says he flipped through Casanova’s journals, then decided to invent his own rake. "The real Casanova is a wonderful idea for another film," said Hallstrom, "but we pretty much threw that one out the window to make this one."

This is a pic designed to play in the Red States, for sure. The Hollywood Reporter writes that it’s “a genuine crowd-pleaser that should have exhibitors everywhere smiling along with huge numbers of moviegoers”. And London’s Evening Standard says “the film has energy and pace but very little sophistication. But if you like pretty costumes to go with pretty faces, and the kind of historical romp that murders reality but provides instant, easy entertainment, this Casanova is for you.”

Comparisons to Richard Lester’s madcap film, The Three Musketeers, abound. Screen Daily says the film is “more a farce-tinged rom-com than a risque sex romp”. The Hollywood Reporter says that Heath Ledger portrays Casanova like an “overgrown kid rather than the smooth seducer; more Gerard Depardieu than Errol Flynn.”

Translation: it’s OK to sit next to your parents for this one.

The city, as always was ready for its close-up. Writes the Hollywood Reporter, “Venice has never looked so scintillating on screen”. It wouldn’t be Venice without some controversy, though, would it? And so the Gazzettino is reporting that cultural commissioner Sandro Parenzo is grousing about how the production company cheaped-out and exploited the Comune, paying only US $90,000 for unprecedented access to calles, campi and the insides of countless, rarely filmed palazzi and other vintage buildings.

Bad Bag

A new program by the Comune of Venice is slapping leviathan fines on people who buy counterfeit designer goods from those guys with the open-air blanket-bottegas that seem to be at the foot of every bridge. How does a 10000 Euro fine sound for that ratskin Prada-like wallet? Believe it or not, it's possible.

The program is called "Bad Bag", and posters have gone up all over town warning  visitors of the new down-side to "brand crimes". It's interesting that the program name is in English. I'm guessing that we anglophones comprise the biggest chunk of the target market.

Venice has long been overrun with ersatz designer goods sellers. I have to admit, I haven't been able to advance a theory on how it is these guys -- largely foreigners -- have been able to operate so freely. Venice is so incredibly finite, so full of dead ends and limited-access campi. It would seem that trapping their quarry would be a fairly low-order military operation for the carabinieri. It must be more complex than I realize.

I've always wondered about the true effectiveness of hyper-criminalizing consumers who buy illegal stuff and services, when the real target is intended to be the sellers. Can anyone think of a case where sellers were, in effect starved out of business? I know it never seems to really shut down prostitution or drug operations.

I hope it works. These bagmen are rough dudes, and are often involved in other crimes in the city. I'll watch to see if this new campaign has the intended effect

Giorgio Vasari Online

Over dinner in Rome in 1546, a certain Cardinal Farnese asked artist and architect Giorgio Vasari to assemble what came to be known as "The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects."

It was a a gift to art historians that still shines today. Vasari knew many of his subjects personally, and his first-hand and near-first-hand account of their genius, virtues and mortal frailties has an almost journalistic feeling at times.

There are English translations of Vasari's work online in several locations, but here's one notable place to have a look (new translations that are growing week by week). Venetian artists and architects, as well as outsiders who have important works in Venice are well represented, including the Bellini's, Sansovino, Michele Sanmicheli, and Palladio, among others.

Remains Of Original Campanile Found?

A tiny squib in the Gazzettino suggests that the remains of the Campanile of San Marco has been found in the water about three miles "from San Nicolo'" on the Lido. As you likely know, the original collapsed in 1902 (as oft-seen in the famed but mostly fake photo you see everywhere). Perhaps the rubble was tossed in the Adriatic.

I'll watch to see if there's more on the story. Interesting.

Glass Magic Made Venetian Painting Shine

In an effort to unlock the riddle of how it was that the paintings of Venetian Renaissance masters had a "special glow" about them, Barbara Berrie, senior conservation scientist at the National Gallery of Art, trained an electron microscope on works by Tintoretto and Lotto. The secret revealed: glass mixed into the pigments.

Barrie had developed the hypothesis after Louisa Matthew, an art historian at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.,  did some sleuthing around in the Venetian State Archives. There she found some curious inventory records dating to 1534 taken from the shop of  Domenico de Gardignano, a Venetian color merchant. The documents suggested that some of his pigments had contained ground glass, something modern scholars had absolutely no clue about.

I guess if anyone were to use glass innovatively this way, it would be the Venetians, given their mastery of art glass. The pre-Venetians  -- the Roman subjects of places like nearby Aquilea -- were likewise glass geniuses, and the speculation is that they brought their secrets to the lagoon when they fled the mauraders in the early part of the first millenium. Perhaps glass in pigments was one of them.

Want to learn more? Follow this link to a story in Science News Online.

Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova To Premiere at the Venice Film Festival

Veniceblog reader J. has just sent word that Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova will be unveiled at the Venice Film Festival on September 3rd. It should be released in the US around Christmas. (UPDATE: the reviews are trickling in. See this post.)

We've been tracking this production ... folks have sent me pix of the filming in progress, sets, actors in costume and the like (see this link, for example). The Casanova production company actually contacted me and used some of my ambient audio recordings of the city to guide sound design for the film

Some interesting blurbs from press material:

Casanova is, after an interval of almost 30 years, the first film by a major production company to be filmed entirely in Italy (and more importantly in Venice).

"We have been courting the producers of this film, which shows off Venice as an extraordinary movie set, ever since last year", declared the Festival's Director, Marco Müller. "It is the perfect film for a festive occasion; it is a fun, unrestrained work, like the classic Hollywood cloak-and-dagger films, but with a robust dose of modern, irreverent modernity."

(That's a relief. I hate old-fashioned, out of date modernity.)

The film stars Heath Ledger as the title horndog himself, along with the long-suffering Sienna Miller (Jude .. dude ... how could you?) as his love interest. You've also got  Jeremy Irons, Lena Olin and Oliver Platt to round out the cast.

I've got my fingers crossed on this one. I'll follow the early reviews and let you know.

By the way, if you're in town during the Film Festival, by all means go. It's a total trip, and not at all difficult to navigate. Tickets are reasonably easy to get, and available in convenient places throughout the city.

Astounding British Library Engravings of the Regatta Storica

I remembered reading somewhere that the British Library had been quietly scanning in the pages of rare books in its collection and posting them on the net. I was stuck for an hour at the SFO airport a couple days ago, waiting for a plane, so I fired up the notebook, latched onto a wireless network, and poked around the British Library. I stumbled into a section called Treasures in Full, containing miracles like an ultra-high-res scan of the Magna Carta and manuscripts from Chaucer. Down the page there was an intriguing link called Renaissance Festival Books: “253 books about festivals and ceremonies in Europe from 1475 to 1700”.

Since they knew how to throw some hellacious parties, I figured maybe there would be something in there about the Venetians. I banged a few times on their search engine. Up came 11 books about Venice ... mostly texts in Italian, with sparse illustrations … fancy initial caps … flourishes, but nothing graphically dramatic.

Except, that is, for a book titled “Visit to Venice of Ernst August, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg”, published in 1685. Sounds like a colossal snore, but oh baby.

Deep inside were a series of unbelievably detailed, incredibly large engravings of the Historic Regatta (Regatta Storica). I’ve seen Guardi, Canaletto and other paintings and illustrations of the Regatta before, but these pictures completely reset my vision of what the pageant was all about. Honestly, it looks like sci-fi.

The first illustration is a panoramic fold-out that takes in the Canal Grande from Ca’ Foscari all the way to the end of the Riva degli Schiavoni. The page is at least 20 feet long, and depicts all the major architecture along the Canalazzo along with dozens, perhaps hundreds of boats. Be warned, the file is huge. Thankfully, the British Library’s servers are zippy and the image appears via broadband in seconds. The link to the file is here. (Remember, Windows Internet Explorer usually resizes/shrinks super high-res images in the browser window. To see the full hi-res pix, double click on the image until you see a little orange square in the corner, then click on the orange square. Zoom. Big.)

Below are a couple reduced, tiny fragments from the massive panoramic ... though you really have to see the full image to appreciate it.

After the pan are a series of engravings of details of individual regatta barges (called peotas) that seem to have sailed out of a baroque psilocybin dream/nightmare.

To see the full-up image of the sea-monster-peota  shown above, click here.

There are 9 other killer engravings, all linked below.
The peota di Venere
The peota di Marte
The peota di Glauco
The peota di Diana
The peota di Giunone
The peota di Pallade
The boat -- a Margherota -- that carried Ernst August
15 other peote that took part in the regatta
A later illustration by Andrea Zucchi of a peota from the regatta of 1716 (somehow bound into the book.

This year, by the way, the annual Historic Regatta takes place on Sunday, September 5th along the Canal Grande. It’s a wonderful spectacle, but it looks downright folksy next to the old-school pageants of the Serenissima.

Resist the Urge

In the 1955 film, Summertime, set in Venice, there's a scene where Kate Hepburn takes a step backward  while posing for a photo and falls into a canal in Campo San Barnaba. She later blamed the dip for an eye infection that is apocryphally said to have plagued her for the rest of her life. But according to author Kevin Brownlow, La Hepburn used to routinely swim in the canals after dusk, and  "her attempt to blame the film company for her ailment was just a bluff" .

Bluff or not, swimming in a rio is massively bad idea. Plainly put: the canals are Venice's toilet. While there are plans under consideration to change this, raw sewage mainlines right into the acqua, as it has for centuries. The tide sorta scrubs the waterways clean (in theory) twice a day ... but still ... you get the picture.

I've seen kids on Sacca Fisola in the middle of a heatwave jumping in the Canale Della Giudecca. But that's essentially a deep-channel river, so most of them likely lived to tell about it. Take a dip in a slow-running, shallow canal, however, and you're splashing and follicking with leviathan quantities of your good pal Escherichia coli.

Lord Byron used to prove his manliness with epic nude swims from the Lido to the end of the Canal Grande. Then again, he died at 36.

Despite all this, occasional crank tourists, amazingly, still strip down to their Speedos and make like vaporettos. Veniceblog reader David, from the UK, just drew my attention to a recent news report from the Italian press agency ANSA which descibed a  31-year-old Australian tourista who:

"was apparently an excellent swimmer and quite ready to cover the half kilometre between the Rialto bus stop and his hotel in Piazza San Marco in the water - even if it was 4 o’clock in the morning."

Sober, no less.

The cops fished him out. He was supposedly looking for a shortcut to his hotel.