My (costly) voyages through Venice

Lord Byron swam the length of the Grand Canal in Venice. He also swam across the lagoon to the Lido. He found a physical freedom from the handicap of his club foot in his swimming, and inspired poets’ swimming events all over Europe. When I gaze at the Grand Canal now, I imagine him weaving his way bravely among the boats. I have never seen anyone swimming in the canal. It would be unwise.

My parents took me to Venice in my late teens, to stay in the Hotel Accademia and to wander, enchanted, wherever I wished. The hotel has a terrace from which one can hear and glimpse the Grand Canal, surely the most ravishing feast of architecture on the planet – a “gallimaufry” of it, according to Jan Morris. I was too young to take it all in. I still am.

Venice is mired in its own beauty. Dazzled, more than 20 million of us pour in every year. So do more than 650 cruise ships, many bigger than the Titanic. Are we loving Venice to death?

Vanessa, one of our Venetian owners who also runs a restaurant serving slow food, was in despair as she talked of Venice’s problems. Only about 50,000 Venetians now live in the old town, as foreign buyers have snapped up the palazzi and most of the best houses. It is hard to find a shop that sells groceries.

It is an unreal city, a shadow of its old self, condemned to primp and preen for the crowds of detached visitors – who will go away and on to Florence and Rome, or Athens, with their photos of the floodwater lapping at the feet of the Caffè Florian in St Mark’s Square.

“La Serenissima”, as Venice has modestly called herself, was a Gondoliers ferry tourists along Venice’s Grand Canal at sunset; Alastair Sawday’s new book, below; the author as a young man, right nation of islands and of immense power, poised twixt East and West, Muslim and Christian, Rome and Constantinople. She was the mistress of the Mediterranean, haughty, detached, glittering and unfathomable. She lost her power in the 16th century but staggered on for three more centuries, applying make-up and partying as voluptuously as any power in Europe. She is still impossibly glamorous.

From the airport you may arrive by boat, swept along on a wave of dawning incredulity. From the railway station you step straight into the hubbub a few yards from the water and are swept into the vortex of beauty. You will find yourself drawn ineluctably to St Mark’s Square, where you will blink and stretch your eyes in disbelief. For Napoleon, this great roofless room was the “drawing room of Europe”; I prefer to think of it as a ballroom.

If there is music playing in the Caffè Florian you may well sweep the nearest woman into your arms and dance her across the square, as I did. The magic of Venice works like that. Well, that was my excuse, and the rather startled Dutch tourist forgave my exuberance, I think. After my first visit with my parents, I came to Venice as a student, working in my holidays as a tour manager and guide for groups of about 40 American tourists. I tried to appear casual, but my face must have given away my delight at every turn.

My enthusiasm carried me through a difficult moment when, alone at 1am on a pontoon with half a dozen stocky gondoliers, I tried to negotiate the price. The six gondolas we had hired for a merry evening of song and canal-gliding were about to cost me vastly more than we had agreed. My Italian was three days old, my experience not much older. The gondoliers had lost their jauntiness and were now serious, arms folded across their muscled chests, eyes narrowed. “Scusi, ma è troppo!” [“Excuse me, but it’s too much”] I boldly declared.

A cascade of Italian words and expletives overwhelmed me, but I stood my ground and tried again. Still, there is only so much one can do with “Scusi, ma è troppo.” I shuddered to a halt and, feeling my disadvantage growing and my knees wobbling, retreated while I had some dignity left.

In this extract from his new book, special places guru Alastair Sawday reveals why beauty comes at a price