Protest of walking to our apartment instead of taking the vaporetti water bus
Timeless Venice
Sinking Venice
The window from the Bridge of Sighs
Pigeons at San Marco Square
The Doges Palace
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Venice Part 1 - The Moor
Sal turned to me and said that the tickets for the water bus (vaporetti) from the train station to the next stop at Campo Santa Margherita was 6 Euro per person so we both agreed we should walk. It was not a popular decision and the complaints were loud and boisterous all the way over to our apartment where we met Annalisa from Views on Venice. She spoke English to Sal and Italian to me for some strange reason and walked very quickly from where she met us in the middle of the Piazza named for the Patron Saint of Expectant Mothers. Our trail of weary travelers with wheeled suitcases stretched out from one end of the huge Campo to the tiny quick footed Annalisa. Sal was nearly jogging with her, his suitcase leaping over the cobblestones, as she said she had another appointment to make. We reached the end of this grand open space, and entered a long narrow alley with a great iron door at the end. Annalisa slipped the key in the door and we were treated to the wonderfully cool conditioned air of our recently renovated Venice apartment. We had heard much about Venice, how it was crowded with tourists, reeked of low tide and that a one day stay would be plenty. We had planned for three and it was no where nearly enough.
The three bedroom two story flat was like heaven; windows closed, air conditioning on, no mosquitoes, the perfect trilogy for our formerly maligned Florentine Villa inhabitants. Annalisa explained first to me in Italian (for which I politely pretended to understand) and then to Sal in English that garbage was picked up daily right outside the front door and showed us in a hurry how to regulate the temperature, turn on/off the dishwasher and rushed through the rest of the electronics so fast that we had to learn the hard way that the hot water heater was not yet turned on. We never did figure out the TV set and I discovered with a great deal of consternation that the internet was available in every corner of the flat except the master bedroom where I unknowingly had set up my computer to write.
Not wasting any time the three adults struck out to explore the area while the boys stayed behind. Campo Santa Margherita is named by Project for Public Spaces as one of the 60 best public spaces in the world and it is off the beaten track of tourists to San Marco Square. In fact it’s hard to find if you are looking for it and most people stumble onto to it by mistake. Not sure if Santa Margherita was ever a real person; her story is a bit like Jonah and the Whale only she is swallowed by a Great Dragon. Inside the Dragon’s stomach she makes the sign of the crucifix and presto bingo the Dragon is blown to bits and she escapes unharmed. The imagery is a bit disturbing given her patronage to expectant mothers.
Next door to our apartment was the Carmelite confraternity of Santa Maria dei Carmini, a 17th century church and school. The roofline is heavily adorned with images of the Jewish Prophets Elijah and Elisha. The Carmelites began as hermetic monks who returned to Mount Carmel in Israel during the crusades believing the 900 BCE Prophet and his disciple to be the original founders of the order. Nearly becoming nonexistent by the15th century the Carmelites experienced a revival popularizing the Brown Scapular nun’s tunic and habit which was symbolic of the protection of Blessed Virgin Mary. Rising high overhead on the top of the bell tower a modern version of the Madonna replaced an older one struck by lightning.
Below we made our way around the fountain of Santa Margherita and her dragon surrounded by merchant shops and cafes catering to the locals and tourists. A small building erected in 1725 as a tanners school sits oddly in the middle of the Campo as the canal that once bordered the southern perimeter was filled in with concrete.
We were heading in the general direction of Piazza San Marco and at each turn into a new narrowed alley an arrow pointed in that direction. If all roads lead to Rome than most certainly all alleys lead to San Marco Square.
We passed the “House of the Moor”, a rundown former residence of Cristoforo Moro who by some accounts was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Othello. Like Othello, Moro was a Venetian cadet sent to the island of Cyprus as Governor in 1505-1507 and whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances. Upon his return to Venice, Moro took a second wife by the name Demonia similar in spelling to Othello’s Desdemona.
In a stroke of Shakespearean drama Cristoforo Moro is also the name of the 67th Doge of Venice who ruled what was then the turbulent Republic from 1462 to 1471. Doge Moro is also linked by literary experts to Othello as a character model. The two Moro’s although they share the exact same name are apparently unrelated since the Doge never had children. The name Moro means Moor or Black African thus the connection to Othello but the feminine “Mora” translates from Italian to mulberry or blackberry. On the other side of Venice the tomb of Doge Moro is decorated in a mulberry motif. Othello gives Desdemona his mother’s kerchief also in a berry motif. This kerchief later becomes the symbol of a fabricated infidelity involving Desdemona and one of Othello’s highly regarded soldiers.
Perhaps Shakespeare, always the master of double entendre used the “Moor” Othello to parable the Doge Moro’s difficulties at the time. To put things into historical perspective, while the Muslim Moors were being driven out of Spain, the Muslim Arabs under Mehmed II “The Conqueror” had already taken Constantinople and much of Eastern Europe substantially loosening Venice’s control of the lucrative Mediterranean trade they enjoyed for 400 years. Doge Moro most assuredly was not the favored son of the Pope with the Muslim threat mounting on his watch. In the end Othello ends his own life after killing Desdemona when the truth is revealed that she was faithful to him after all and Doge Moro’s war racks up heavy casualties to lives and treasury. The Venetians never really recover.
The last time I was in Venice was 37 years ago. Holding out bread crumbs in a frightening commune with nature I stood covered from head to toe with hundreds of pigeons clinging to me in San Marco. In an instant a stranger swept them out of my way to appear like an apparition pressing me to buy a “Swiss” watch. I had just purchased two Murano Glass birds for my mother at a nearby shop. They were carefully wrapped up in tissue and I held them securely under one arm. I threw the crumbs I had in my other hand on the ground and the birds abandoned me. I then walked away with the man following. I waved him off but he persisted. At 20 years old I was young, impressionable and naïve. The man would not give up so I gave in and paid him $20 cash rationalizing that I bought the watch for my father since I had bought the birds for my mother.
I stood again in the magnificent Square of Saint Mark. Time had changed very little in La Serenissima, the serene city of Venice. Without cars or modern architecture the people were the only anchors to the present day. All else had remained for centuries. The pigeons still swarmed the Piazza, artists and street hawkers pedaled their wares and musicians played at the bandstand cafés. Hordes of tourist parade through the sinking city every day.
The boys had somehow reached San Marco before we did even though they left much later. We decided to visit the Doges Palace and moved quickly through the great structure before closing. Weapons and armor were plentifully displayed and the boys ate it up. We crossed the infamous Bridge of Sighs and peered out on the Grand Canal as prisoners had done centuries before. The magnificent grandeur and beauty of Venice is without equal to anywhere else I have seen. Nothing compares to the legacy that ushered in the artisans of the East bringing their trade and great craft in silk, metals and glass. It occurred to me that this journey I had taken from Israel to Greece and Italy was the path of Western ideas and culture culminating here in the city of canals: Venice.
As I peered through stone bars on the Bridge of Sighs I thought of how I had carried the two glass birds in my backpack across Europe carefully preserving them for my return and how thrilled my mother had been when I gave them to her. It was my testament to growing up. I was not so fortunate with the watch. In a pinch I traded the watch and my ticket back to SFO for an airline ticket to Bangor, Maine via Vancouver, Canada (don’t ask). Midflight our London Travel Agent found out the true value of the “Swiss” works and left us stranded in Vancouver.
As for Shakespeare, as much as he wrote about it, he never even traveled to Italy. There is even some speculation that he did not write the “Italian” plays at all. And Mehmed II, The Conqueror was really not so bad. Once taking Constantinople ending the Byzantine Roman Empire for good, Mehmed instituted a policy of tolerance for all religions. Conversant in 6 languages, Mehmed was a great supporter of education and established many schools and universities in what is now present day Istanbul. He took great interest in the Renaissance and supported the “humanist” philosophies and patronized the art. He nearly took the city of Rome in 1480 which would have completed his claim to be the “New Caesar” He died in 1481 of a sudden illness.
It is interesting to speculate how the world might have changed if Mehmed had been successful in taking Italy as part of the Ottoman Empire. The Papal years that followed were filled with brutal retribution, inquisition and intolerance. The first ghetto (which means foundry) was established in Venice in 1515. Many others were to follow. Had he lived in this time Elijah the revered Prophet of Carmelite monks and a Jew would have been forced to pay for the Christian guards of the ghetto to lock him up every night. He could not have owned property and there were only a few things he would have been allowed to do to make a living. Of course it would have been a good time for the old irascible Prophet to show up. Like he did 2900 years ago at Mt. Carmel he could have set things straight; he would have found a hilltop, built an alter, thrown on a few oxen parts, doused it with 12 barrels of water and let Yahweh do the rest with a streak of fire from the sky. Then he would have prayed for the drought of human decency to end.
The three bedroom two story flat was like heaven; windows closed, air conditioning on, no mosquitoes, the perfect trilogy for our formerly maligned Florentine Villa inhabitants. Annalisa explained first to me in Italian (for which I politely pretended to understand) and then to Sal in English that garbage was picked up daily right outside the front door and showed us in a hurry how to regulate the temperature, turn on/off the dishwasher and rushed through the rest of the electronics so fast that we had to learn the hard way that the hot water heater was not yet turned on. We never did figure out the TV set and I discovered with a great deal of consternation that the internet was available in every corner of the flat except the master bedroom where I unknowingly had set up my computer to write.
Not wasting any time the three adults struck out to explore the area while the boys stayed behind. Campo Santa Margherita is named by Project for Public Spaces as one of the 60 best public spaces in the world and it is off the beaten track of tourists to San Marco Square. In fact it’s hard to find if you are looking for it and most people stumble onto to it by mistake. Not sure if Santa Margherita was ever a real person; her story is a bit like Jonah and the Whale only she is swallowed by a Great Dragon. Inside the Dragon’s stomach she makes the sign of the crucifix and presto bingo the Dragon is blown to bits and she escapes unharmed. The imagery is a bit disturbing given her patronage to expectant mothers.
Next door to our apartment was the Carmelite confraternity of Santa Maria dei Carmini, a 17th century church and school. The roofline is heavily adorned with images of the Jewish Prophets Elijah and Elisha. The Carmelites began as hermetic monks who returned to Mount Carmel in Israel during the crusades believing the 900 BCE Prophet and his disciple to be the original founders of the order. Nearly becoming nonexistent by the15th century the Carmelites experienced a revival popularizing the Brown Scapular nun’s tunic and habit which was symbolic of the protection of Blessed Virgin Mary. Rising high overhead on the top of the bell tower a modern version of the Madonna replaced an older one struck by lightning.
Below we made our way around the fountain of Santa Margherita and her dragon surrounded by merchant shops and cafes catering to the locals and tourists. A small building erected in 1725 as a tanners school sits oddly in the middle of the Campo as the canal that once bordered the southern perimeter was filled in with concrete.
We were heading in the general direction of Piazza San Marco and at each turn into a new narrowed alley an arrow pointed in that direction. If all roads lead to Rome than most certainly all alleys lead to San Marco Square.
We passed the “House of the Moor”, a rundown former residence of Cristoforo Moro who by some accounts was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Othello. Like Othello, Moro was a Venetian cadet sent to the island of Cyprus as Governor in 1505-1507 and whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances. Upon his return to Venice, Moro took a second wife by the name Demonia similar in spelling to Othello’s Desdemona.
In a stroke of Shakespearean drama Cristoforo Moro is also the name of the 67th Doge of Venice who ruled what was then the turbulent Republic from 1462 to 1471. Doge Moro is also linked by literary experts to Othello as a character model. The two Moro’s although they share the exact same name are apparently unrelated since the Doge never had children. The name Moro means Moor or Black African thus the connection to Othello but the feminine “Mora” translates from Italian to mulberry or blackberry. On the other side of Venice the tomb of Doge Moro is decorated in a mulberry motif. Othello gives Desdemona his mother’s kerchief also in a berry motif. This kerchief later becomes the symbol of a fabricated infidelity involving Desdemona and one of Othello’s highly regarded soldiers.
Perhaps Shakespeare, always the master of double entendre used the “Moor” Othello to parable the Doge Moro’s difficulties at the time. To put things into historical perspective, while the Muslim Moors were being driven out of Spain, the Muslim Arabs under Mehmed II “The Conqueror” had already taken Constantinople and much of Eastern Europe substantially loosening Venice’s control of the lucrative Mediterranean trade they enjoyed for 400 years. Doge Moro most assuredly was not the favored son of the Pope with the Muslim threat mounting on his watch. In the end Othello ends his own life after killing Desdemona when the truth is revealed that she was faithful to him after all and Doge Moro’s war racks up heavy casualties to lives and treasury. The Venetians never really recover.
The last time I was in Venice was 37 years ago. Holding out bread crumbs in a frightening commune with nature I stood covered from head to toe with hundreds of pigeons clinging to me in San Marco. In an instant a stranger swept them out of my way to appear like an apparition pressing me to buy a “Swiss” watch. I had just purchased two Murano Glass birds for my mother at a nearby shop. They were carefully wrapped up in tissue and I held them securely under one arm. I threw the crumbs I had in my other hand on the ground and the birds abandoned me. I then walked away with the man following. I waved him off but he persisted. At 20 years old I was young, impressionable and naïve. The man would not give up so I gave in and paid him $20 cash rationalizing that I bought the watch for my father since I had bought the birds for my mother.
I stood again in the magnificent Square of Saint Mark. Time had changed very little in La Serenissima, the serene city of Venice. Without cars or modern architecture the people were the only anchors to the present day. All else had remained for centuries. The pigeons still swarmed the Piazza, artists and street hawkers pedaled their wares and musicians played at the bandstand cafés. Hordes of tourist parade through the sinking city every day.
The boys had somehow reached San Marco before we did even though they left much later. We decided to visit the Doges Palace and moved quickly through the great structure before closing. Weapons and armor were plentifully displayed and the boys ate it up. We crossed the infamous Bridge of Sighs and peered out on the Grand Canal as prisoners had done centuries before. The magnificent grandeur and beauty of Venice is without equal to anywhere else I have seen. Nothing compares to the legacy that ushered in the artisans of the East bringing their trade and great craft in silk, metals and glass. It occurred to me that this journey I had taken from Israel to Greece and Italy was the path of Western ideas and culture culminating here in the city of canals: Venice.
As I peered through stone bars on the Bridge of Sighs I thought of how I had carried the two glass birds in my backpack across Europe carefully preserving them for my return and how thrilled my mother had been when I gave them to her. It was my testament to growing up. I was not so fortunate with the watch. In a pinch I traded the watch and my ticket back to SFO for an airline ticket to Bangor, Maine via Vancouver, Canada (don’t ask). Midflight our London Travel Agent found out the true value of the “Swiss” works and left us stranded in Vancouver.
As for Shakespeare, as much as he wrote about it, he never even traveled to Italy. There is even some speculation that he did not write the “Italian” plays at all. And Mehmed II, The Conqueror was really not so bad. Once taking Constantinople ending the Byzantine Roman Empire for good, Mehmed instituted a policy of tolerance for all religions. Conversant in 6 languages, Mehmed was a great supporter of education and established many schools and universities in what is now present day Istanbul. He took great interest in the Renaissance and supported the “humanist” philosophies and patronized the art. He nearly took the city of Rome in 1480 which would have completed his claim to be the “New Caesar” He died in 1481 of a sudden illness.
It is interesting to speculate how the world might have changed if Mehmed had been successful in taking Italy as part of the Ottoman Empire. The Papal years that followed were filled with brutal retribution, inquisition and intolerance. The first ghetto (which means foundry) was established in Venice in 1515. Many others were to follow. Had he lived in this time Elijah the revered Prophet of Carmelite monks and a Jew would have been forced to pay for the Christian guards of the ghetto to lock him up every night. He could not have owned property and there were only a few things he would have been allowed to do to make a living. Of course it would have been a good time for the old irascible Prophet to show up. Like he did 2900 years ago at Mt. Carmel he could have set things straight; he would have found a hilltop, built an alter, thrown on a few oxen parts, doused it with 12 barrels of water and let Yahweh do the rest with a streak of fire from the sky. Then he would have prayed for the drought of human decency to end.
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