Territory: The region includes the eastern part of the Po Valley and, to the north, a part of the Dolomites. The extensive plain, with the Po delta, is rich in waters. It is a region which combines two different and unique aspects of the Italian nature: the lagoon zone (Venice) and the majestic peaks of the Dolomites of Cadore.
Cities: The regional capital is Venice. Other important cities are: Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, Rovigo, Belluno.
Art: In the region numerous and important Roman traces can be found: the best known example is the Arena of Verona. In the area around Venice, Byzantine influences are visible (St. Mark and the Cathedral of Torcello); in the hinterland, away from the sea there are many outstanding examples of Romanesque and Gothic art. The Renaissance palaces are numerous and of great value.
Museums: In Venice: the Academy Galleries house the major collections of Venetian painting from 1300 to 1700; the G. Franchetti Gallery houses important paintings, while Guggenheim collection exhibits international works of contemporary art. In the Palazzo Grassi, exhibitions of international interest are organized every year. In this beautiful city there are also: the Museum of the eighteenth century life in Venice with tapestries, attire, furniture and paintings; the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Oriental Museum and the Correr Museum, which is reserved to Renaissance masterpieces. In Verona the Civic Museum of Art, which is devoted to the great Verona painting, the Archaeologic Museum and the Museum of Frescoes can be visited. Vicenza offers: the Civic Museum (ethnology and archaeology) and the Pinacoteca. In Padua the famous Scrovegni Chapel, with Giottos frescoes, can be admired; the Civic Museum and the botanic garden, the oldest in Europe, can be admired. In Treviso there is the Museum of the Casa Trevigiana with modern furniture and sculptures. Rovigo has the Gallery of the Concordi (Venetian school from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century) and the Civic Museum of the Polesine Civilization.
To be visited: The Venetian islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello; Chioggia; the canals of the Brenta and the Veneto villas. Visitors can admire the enchanting and unique lagoon and the majestic reddish spires of the Dolomites.
Venice Picture Gallery
Venice
Nobody arrives in
Venice and sees the city for the first time.
Depicted and described so often that its image has
become part of the European collective consciousness,
Venice can initially create the slightly
anticlimactic feeling that everything looks exactly
as it should. The water-lapped palaces along the
Canal Grande are just as the brochure photographs
made them out to be, Piazza San Marco does indeed
look as perfect as a film set, and the panorama
across the water from the Palazzo Ducale is
precisely as Canaletto painted it. The sense of
familiarity soon fades, however, as details of the
scene begin to catch the attention an ancient
carving high on a wall, a boat being manoeuvred
round an impossible corner, a tiny shop in a
dilapidated building, a waterlogged basement. And
the longer one looks, the stranger and more
intriguing Venice becomes.
Founded fifteen hundred years ago
on a cluster of mudflats in the centre of the lagoon,
Venice rose to become Europe's main trading post
between the West and the East, and at its height
controlled an empire that spread north to the
Dolomites and over the sea as far as Cyprus. As its
wealth increased and its population grew, the fabric
of the city grew ever more dense. Very few parts of
the hundred or so islets that compose the historic
centre are not built up, and very few of its closely
knit streets bear no sign of the city's long lineage.
Even in the most insignificant alleyway you might
find fragments of a medieval building embedded in
the wall of a house like fossil remains lodged in a
cliff face.
The melancholic air of the place is in part a product of the discrepancy between the grandeur of its history and what the city has become. In the heyday of the Venetian Republic, some 200,000 people lived in Venice, not far short of three times its present population. Merchants from Germany, Greece, Turkey and a host of other countries maintained warehouses here; transactions in the banks and bazaars of the Rialto dictated the value of commodities all over the continent; in the dockyards of the Arsenale the workforce was so vast that a warship could be built and fitted out in a single day; and the Piazza San Marco was perpetually thronged with people here to set up business deals or report to the Republic's government. Nowadays it's no longer a living metropolis but rather the embodiment of a fabulous past, dependent for its survival largely on the people who come to marvel at its relics.
The monuments which draw the largest crowds are the Basilica di San Marco the mausoleum of the city's patron saint and the Palazzo Ducale the home of the doge and all the governing councils. Certainly these are the most dramatic structures in the city: the first a mosaic-clad emblem of Venice's Byzantine origins, the second perhaps the finest of all secular Gothic buildings. Every parish rewards exploration, though a roll-call of the churches worth visiting would feature over fifty names, and a list of the important paintings and sculptures they contain would be twice as long. Two of the distinctively Venetian institutions known as the Scuole retain some of the outstanding examples of Italian Renaissance art the Scuola di San Rocco, with its dozens of pictures by Tintoretto, and the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, decorated with a gorgeous sequence by Carpaccio.
Although many of the city's treasures remain in the buildings for which they were created, a sizeable number have been removed to one or other of Venice's museums. The one that should not be missed is the Accademia, an assembly of Venetian painting that consists of virtually nothing but masterpieces; other prominent collections include the museum of eighteenth-century art in the Ca' Rezzonico and the Museo Correr, the civic museum of Venice but again, a comprehensive list would fill a page.
Then, of course, there's the inexhaustible spectacle of the streets themselves, of the majestic and sometimes decrepit palaces, of the hemmed-in squares where much of the social life of the city is conducted, of the sunlit courtyards that suddenly open up at the end of an unpromising passageway. The cultural heritage preserved in the museums and churches is a source of endless fascination, but you should discard your itineraries for a day and just wander the anonymous parts of Venice reveal as much of the city's essence as the highlighted attractions. Equally indispensible for a full understanding of Venice's way of life and development are expeditions to the northern and southern islands of the lagoon, where the incursions of the tourist industry are on the whole less obtrusive.
The Guide in Zip version COMPRESSED
Venice Picture Gallery
Venice Museums
H O M E - ITALY
BY REGIONS
