Scan barcode
daja57's review against another edition
5.0
Jan Morris writes beautiful prose. This hymn to Venice, from someone who has lived there, is, as you would expect, a lyrical and haunting evocation of the beauty of one of the world's most visited tourist destinations, and a fascinating history of a city state that was a republic and maritime empire throughout the middle ages, but it is also shrewd and practical and funny.
This isn't a tourist guide. I have been to Venice as a tourist and I would not have packed this book. This is a piece of the best sort of travel writing, the sort where the traveller becomes part of an alien landscape and has deep interactions with the inhabitants and begins to struggle to an understanding of what it must be like to live in such a place. This is that perfect sort of travel book ... except that it focuses on a single place and it is all the better for that.
There are some fascinating bits about the Venetian language. The word 'Arsenal' which was the name for the Venetian shipyard which used assembly-line techniques (celebrated by Dante in the Inferno) to produce, at peak, a fighting galley every day, comes from the arabic 'dar es sinaa' which means 'house of art'. The Arabic word 'sikka' (a die) became 'zecca' (a mint) and thence 'zecchino' (a coin) which is the origin of the Venetian unot of currency, the sequin. (The City: 17)
It is enlivened with historical anecdotes:
"One bishop playing a double game with such conspicuous ineptitude that he was simultaneously excommunicated both by the Pope and by the Oecumenical Patriarch." (The People: 9)
"The Grand Canal ... follows the course of a river known to the ancients as Rivo Alto - the origin of the Rialto." (The City: 11)
"The earliest of all state banks, the Banca Giro, was opened on the Rialto in the twelfth century." (The City: 19)
"The fashionable eighteenth-century priest who, though courted by the greatest families of the Serenissima, chose to live in a rat-infested garret, and collected spiders' webs as a hobby." (The Lagoon: 26)
"St Nicholas of Myra ... was particularly revered by the Venetians, if only because at the Council of Nicaea he had soundly boxed the ears of the theologian Arius, from whose very heresy, adopted by the Lombards, some of the earliest Venetians had fled into the lagoon." (The Lagoon: 30)
"The silver reliquary of St Nicholas [in Bari] ...has for nine centuries consistently exuded a liquid Holy Manna of such purity as to be indistinguishable from the purest spring water." (The Lagoon: 30)
But the most remarkable thing about this book is the writing. The prose is like wonder washing over one:
There are stupendous descriptions:
"A mesh of nets patterns the walls of a fisherman's islet, and a restless covey of boats nuzzles its water-gate." (Landfall)
There are utterly original metaphors:
"An air of home-spun guile and complacency, as of a man who has made a large fortune out of slightly shady dealings in artichokes." (The People: 2)
"The gondolier ... utters a series of warning cried when he makes a manoeuvre of this sort, throaty and distraught, like the call of an elderly and world-weary sea-bird." (The City: 12)
"Other Venetian waterways ... have an average width of twelve feet, and the average depth of a fair-sized family bath-tub." (The City: 12)
"The modern Venetian ... examines the world's delights analytically, as a hungry entomologist might dissect a rare but potentially edible spider." (The City: 17)
"Sometimes a layer of snow covers the city, giving it a certain sense of improper whimsy, as if you were to dress a duchess in pink ruffles." (The City: 18)
And there are profundities:
"It is a difficult world, is it not, and heavy with disillusionment?" (The City: 18)
"Do we not know them well, whenever we live, the aesthetic conservers on the one hand, the men of change on the other? Which of these two philosophies is the more romantic, I have never been able to decide." (The City: 22)
This is a book of magic with enchantment on every page.
This isn't a tourist guide. I have been to Venice as a tourist and I would not have packed this book. This is a piece of the best sort of travel writing, the sort where the traveller becomes part of an alien landscape and has deep interactions with the inhabitants and begins to struggle to an understanding of what it must be like to live in such a place. This is that perfect sort of travel book ... except that it focuses on a single place and it is all the better for that.
There are some fascinating bits about the Venetian language. The word 'Arsenal' which was the name for the Venetian shipyard which used assembly-line techniques (celebrated by Dante in the Inferno) to produce, at peak, a fighting galley every day, comes from the arabic 'dar es sinaa' which means 'house of art'. The Arabic word 'sikka' (a die) became 'zecca' (a mint) and thence 'zecchino' (a coin) which is the origin of the Venetian unot of currency, the sequin. (The City: 17)
It is enlivened with historical anecdotes:
"One bishop playing a double game with such conspicuous ineptitude that he was simultaneously excommunicated both by the Pope and by the Oecumenical Patriarch." (The People: 9)
"The Grand Canal ... follows the course of a river known to the ancients as Rivo Alto - the origin of the Rialto." (The City: 11)
"The earliest of all state banks, the Banca Giro, was opened on the Rialto in the twelfth century." (The City: 19)
"The fashionable eighteenth-century priest who, though courted by the greatest families of the Serenissima, chose to live in a rat-infested garret, and collected spiders' webs as a hobby." (The Lagoon: 26)
"St Nicholas of Myra ... was particularly revered by the Venetians, if only because at the Council of Nicaea he had soundly boxed the ears of the theologian Arius, from whose very heresy, adopted by the Lombards, some of the earliest Venetians had fled into the lagoon." (The Lagoon: 30)
"The silver reliquary of St Nicholas [in Bari] ...has for nine centuries consistently exuded a liquid Holy Manna of such purity as to be indistinguishable from the purest spring water." (The Lagoon: 30)
But the most remarkable thing about this book is the writing. The prose is like wonder washing over one:
There are stupendous descriptions:
"A mesh of nets patterns the walls of a fisherman's islet, and a restless covey of boats nuzzles its water-gate." (Landfall)
There are utterly original metaphors:
"An air of home-spun guile and complacency, as of a man who has made a large fortune out of slightly shady dealings in artichokes." (The People: 2)
"The gondolier ... utters a series of warning cried when he makes a manoeuvre of this sort, throaty and distraught, like the call of an elderly and world-weary sea-bird." (The City: 12)
"Other Venetian waterways ... have an average width of twelve feet, and the average depth of a fair-sized family bath-tub." (The City: 12)
"The modern Venetian ... examines the world's delights analytically, as a hungry entomologist might dissect a rare but potentially edible spider." (The City: 17)
"Sometimes a layer of snow covers the city, giving it a certain sense of improper whimsy, as if you were to dress a duchess in pink ruffles." (The City: 18)
And there are profundities:
"It is a difficult world, is it not, and heavy with disillusionment?" (The City: 18)
"Do we not know them well, whenever we live, the aesthetic conservers on the one hand, the men of change on the other? Which of these two philosophies is the more romantic, I have never been able to decide." (The City: 22)
This is a book of magic with enchantment on every page.
kathleenguthriewoods's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Part travelogue, part history book, all a love letter to an extraordinary city and its people.
sophiewelsh's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
3.5
hvogado's review against another edition
3.0
Fiquei pela página 264 ou 265. Não deu para continuar. Um livro muito pormenorizado, aborrecido em alguns assuntos sobres as pontes, os pequenos canais de Veneza. A cidade é dissecada até ao detalhe. Excelente para ler estando em Veneza e acompanhando nas ruas a leitura. Fora dessa cidade, acho um pouco seca. Fiquei a saber de tudo e acabei a meio do livro, nem imagino o que estaria ainda por dizer sobre a cidade.
hakkun1's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
4.5
kelbi's review against another edition
5.0
Superb. I loved reading about this wonderful place. She writes like a dream
caroparr's review against another edition
5.0
Usually I reserve 5 stars for a life-changing book - but this deserves it for being so well written. Read it before you go to get a feel for the city, read it afterwards to savor what you and Morris have seen and to mark places you'll need to see next time. I can't resist one quote that exemplifies her sharp eye and love of language (I recommend reading it aloud for the full effect):
And around the corner, beside the Grand Canal, there lies the incomparable fish market of Venice, a glorious, wet, colourful, high-smelling concourse of the sea, to which in the dawn hours fleets of barges bring the day's supply of sea-foods. Its stalls are lined deliciously with green fronds, damp and cool: and upon them are laid, in a delicately-tinted, slobbering, writhing, glistening mass, the sea-creatures of the lagoon. There are sleek wriggling eels, green or spotted, still pugnaciously alive; beautiful little red fish packed in boxes like shampoos, heads upwards; strange tube-like mollluscs, oozing at the orifice; fine red mullet, cruel pseudo-sharks, undefeated crabs and mounds of gem-like shell-fish; skates, and shoals of small flat-fish, and things like water-tarantula, and pools of soft bulbous octopus, furiously ejecting ink; huge slabs of tunny, fish-rumps and fish-steaks, joints of fish, fish kidneys, innards and guts and roes of fish: a multitude of sea-matter, pink, white, red, green, multi-limbed, beady-eyed, sliding, sensuous, shimmering, flabby, spongy, crisp--all lying aghast upon their fresh green biers, dead, doomed or panting, like a grove of brilliant foliage among the tundra of Venetian stone.
susanlawson's review against another edition
4.0
I read this book before, during and after a brief visit to Venice and I found that it greatly enhanced the experience for me. I was completely entranced by the myriad stories associated with the unique, magical and dreamlike city. As with most good travel writing, it makes you want to go and explore the setting of each and every anecdote or historical event, find each carving and examine each painting or building. Jan Morris lived in Venice, experienced it's seasons and explored it's canals, squares, churches and lagoon and this intimate knowledge suffuses the book with affection and truth.