VENETIAN INSPIRATION
A tour through the canals, alleys and districts of the Serenissima. In Venice to celebrate Carnival, go shopping or simply spend a few days relaxing on the lagoon.
Venice is a timeless muse that inspires, tempts and involves. It is like a mermaid that enchants with its song, inviting you to admire the artistic and historical beauties that characterize it along the city’s canals. It’s one of the most envied Italian cities. Venice is synonymous with Carnival, architectural masterpieces, gondola rides and walks on bridges that link the city’s neighborhoods. Venice is a unique and jagged city. It is a floating beauty and a fixture among the tricolor Italian marvels. Let’s now discover what the city on the lagoon offers us on an ideal tour of the Serenissima...
CARNIVAL
A festival celebrated all over Italy, but in Venice more than elsewhere, it is fully displayed in all its tradition. Cheerfulness, dancing and fun are the cornerstones of Carnival in every part of the boot. Streets are filled the with more or less sought-after masks, traditional costumes and floats, which are, in many cases, satirically decorated. From February 16th to March 5th, the Carnival is everything on the lagoon and is, if not the major, one of the most important carnivals in Italy. The timeless charm of Venice is enhanced by the colors and typical masks of the area. From all over the country tourists come wearing masks and populate the streets of the capital of Veneto. Over a million people are expected in the city with peaks of around 150,000 visitors a day. The most crowded days will be the 3 weekends and Fat Thursday (February 28th) and Tuesday (March 5th). In Venice one inhabits the true atmosphere of Carnival with parties and games. 20 days behind a mask where social obligations are broken, hierarchies are overturned and order will be re-established only after the celebrations. The Venice Carnival sinks its roots in-between tradition and history that after 900 years (the first document that refers to this infamous festivity) survives with unchanged charm.
DISCOVERING THE RIALTO
With its markets, taverns and artisan shops, the Rialto district is one of the most picturesque and characteristic of all of Venice. The bridge of the same name is one of the most famous walks and most photographed in the whole city. The bridge is among the most sought after and immortalized by tourists who take selfies with a view of the Grand Canal. It is also the oldest bridge in Venice (dating back to
around the year 1000), and until 1854 it was the only one that allowed crossing the Grand Canal on foot. Rialto is also the district for the markets which are divided into Pescaria, where the fish caught in the lagoon is sold, and Erbaria, where the fruit, vegetables and seasonal vegetables are traded. In Rialto there is not only fresh and local food, but also space for lovers of typical products. Among the shops, imbued with the atmosphere of a bygone era, we can find workshops from artisans, jewelers and retailers of creations made from Murano glass. A much larger and more modern shopping center, named T Fondaco dei Tedeschi, is in the old post office building. A grand structure devoted to luxury shopping and boasting the best rooftop terrace with a 360-degree view of Venice.
CANNAREGIO, BRIDGE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST
In 1516, the Venetian Senate decided to confine the first Jews who arrived in the lagoon to an outlying islet called Cannaregio, where there was nothing but foundries. Thus, the first Jewish ghetto in the world was born. Half a millennium of history lives on the streets of this “city within the city”, which can be sensed in the aromas that still pervade one of the city’s most extensive sestieri (zones that divide Venice) and stories told on every single trampled
stone. The liveliness and prestige of the Jewish community over time have influenced different aspects of city life. They have given rise to a meeting of cultures and traditions from all over the world, a true Venetian heritage wealth. Among all the Jewish aspects, the most particular one is undoubtedly the food, where the boundaries between various customs blend into tasty dishes and where the stories of ancient civilizations coexist, happily this time.
It is not by chance that some of the most representative foods of the lagoon city derive from the Jewish gastronomic traditions, both Mediterranean and “Nordic”, both united by the wide availability of spices that Venice could secure through its mercantile traffic, and also from the creation of private vegetable gardens in ghetto area and on other Venetian islands. Jewish cuisine revolves around the concept of kashèr (kosher) food, meaning ‘fit’, fit for consumption which are set according to the dictates of the Torah and applied in daily life by the rabbi, even in Venice. It’s also understood that in no other place in the world has such an overlapping of customs ever occurred.
In the ghetto, the cuisine of the Ashkenazi Jews, who came from Germany, meets the exuberant Sephardic food, originators from southern France and Spain, adding to that, the contribution of the Levantines and many other heterogeneous presences linked to maritime trade. The symbolic dish of the Venetian Jewish cuisine is the ‘sarde in saor’, sweet and sour sardines consisting of vinegar and onion combined with raisins and pine nuts, but many other dishes are also specialties of this very particular ethnic trend. These are Venetian dishes par excellence, and unquestionably a Jewish derivation: the “bigoi in salsa” (dark coarse spaghetti seasoned with an anchovy fillets and an onion sauce base), the sweet pancakes, “fritelle di zucca” (pumpkin fritters) and the “bolo”, a soft focaccia with raisins, eggs and sugar that is consumed preferably after the end of fasting during Yom Kippur. And dishes of Portuguese origin incorporating the almonds that are widely used in desserts as in “impàde” a shortcake pastry filled with almonds, sugar and eggs.
THE JEWISH GHETTO MUSEUM
It is a surprising museum, above all for its ability to condense centuries of history of an entire community in a limited space. Here, above all, objects related to the Jewish religion and celebrations were collected, from the Shabbat, the day dedicated to prayer, to Pesaq, the Passover. At the center of attention is the Sefer Torah with its accessories, the sacred parchment covered by a mantel (Meil) and topped with a crown (Ataràh). It is kept in the Ari Ha Kodesh (literally, Wardrobe of Holiness), whose doors are decorated with silk and satin drapes (Parokhet) and it is read with the help of decorated silver rods whose endings are small hands (Yad). There is no lack of curious relics, such as wedding contracts in the form of handwritten parchment and colored in tempera, with the rules for the protection of women in case of the dissolution of the marriage, as allowed by Jewish tradition. This is a reference point for visiting the synagogues and the Jewish cemetery of the Lido.
GET LOST IN VENICE
A city fabric crossed by countless artistic routes, including high end exhibitions and historic buildings where the Venetians’ innate propensity for contemporary art is revealed with all its force and creativity.
One of these is Palazzo Fortuny, a museum-house that belonged to the talented Mariano Fortuny, an eclectic man who was a photographer, set designer, textile creator and painter. His Palazzo is one of the fundamental places in Venice for visual arts since the museum was established in 1975. A masterly example of Venetian Gothic, the palace was created at the end of the 15th century by the nobility of Pesaro, while Mariano Fortuny bought it at the beginning of the 20th century to make it his own studio. After his death, his wife Henriette donated the palace to the City of Venice, which preserves the fabrics and collections of Mariano. The city made it a place dedicated to experimentation and innovation, in a tribute to the spirit and culture of the historic owner.
Here you’ll find wonderful and unmissable exhibitions, and the setting of the Palace, naturally, underscores and deepens each piece, generating a positive energy perhaps influenced by the auras that are innately unconscious in each of us. Spaces that rise from the past completely renovated are
Venice is a unique and jagged city. It is a floating beauty and a fixture among the tricolor Italian marvels.
strengthened by an eclectic charge. This is the case for the Palazzo Grassi-punta della Dogana which further strengthened its presence in the artistic and cultural life of Venice with a new building, which is entirely dedicated to conferences, meetings, screenings and concerts. After the restoration of Palazzo Grassi, in 2006, Punta della Dogana followed and was inaugurated in 2009. The third stage of the François Pinault cultural project in Venice was the salvaging of what was named “Teatrino” in 2013. A complex operation, it is curated and managed by the architect Tadao Ando, who extoled a logic of architectural continuity with respect to previous restorations. With an area of 1000 square meters, the Teatrino has an auditorium with a capacity of 225 seats, with foyers and technical areas (dressing rooms, control rooms, cabins for simultaneous translation ...). It’s a place for exchange, meeting and openness to the city, equipped with the best technological conditions (in particular acoustics) and comfort. Thanks to this building the cultural activities program was further developed to include meetings with artists, conferences, readings, concerts, performances and artistic films. Venice is also, and above all, a discourse in all its forms; like the one that intertwines contemporary art and the age-old tradition of working with glass (through the involvement of important international artists in Murano) which has made it an international bastion of this extraordinary material. It’s called Glasstress, the successful initiative born in 2009 from the mind of Adriano Berengo. A notable project whose architects are the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Berengo Foundation and Berengo Studio in Venice with the collaboration of the Civic Museums Foundation of Venice and Ermitage Italy, curated by Dimitri Ozerkov and Adriano Berengo.