Reflections of Venice 2

Time flies when you’re wandering about and we run out of it, so don’t get to go to Murano. I buy some of the glass jewellery on the main island. The shopkeeper is furious that we want to pay by credit card and he snaps at us and throws the card on the counter, but of course he takes our money.

It becomes apparent that nothing in Venice is for free. Every other place we have visited has offered a map to find your way around and a brochure with sights highlighted – not Venice. When we see a drinking tap we hurriedly fill our water bottles, glancing around to check we will not be fleeced of our Euros or arrested.

There is a clear attitude that your money is welcome but you are an inconvenience, and hardly anyone smiles. Him Outdoors remarks that it seems like a theme park and I guess it does, visited each year by more than 12 million tourists.

The shops all sell glass, lace and masks to tourists (my favourite is the one with the hooked nose which is the Black Death Doctor; the beak was filled with medicinal herbs and essences to disinfect the air and protect the doctor from contagion during outbreaks of the Black Death).

Everything is retail and ‘hospitality’ – I use the term loosely. Venice used to be a hive of ship-building, fishing and trading, but now there is no discernible genuine industry save the men who make the gondolas (with wood from the Cadore region) but there are only a handful of them, and they exist to service the tourist trade also.

We visit the squero, the boatyard in which the gondolas are made. Only three or four are made each year to exact specifications – strong, fast and black. The laws concerning their build were ordained in the sixteenth century. They are 11 metres long, made of 280 pieces of wood, and coated with seven layers of water-proof paint. They are deliberately lopsided to counter the weight of the one-oared rower at the stern.

I like the boats – from the big noisy vaporetto to the silent (unless you get a gondolier who fancies himself as a singer) gondolas. Police boats cruise the canals and the bright red fireboats wait at the Ca’ Foscari ready to rush to emergencies.

It seems incongruous that a city built on water should have problems with fire, but most of the buildings are made of wood and highly flammable, so there are many fires – such as the inferno that destroyed La Fenice in 1996. I even love the private motorboats that drift about waiting to get to open water so they can open throttle.


But if Venice weren’t built on water, would anyone come? Would it be any different from any other town? There are Save Venice funds and campaigns to which people (mainly Americans) give money to restore artworks, buildings and churches, hoping to prevent bits falling off or entire edifices crumbling and collapsing into the lagoon.

So should we save it or not? I suppose the argument is similar with the Elgin Marbles or shrunken heads – if the natives aren’t going to look after them, then we should preserve them for the future. But isn’t this patronising? Should we let nature take its course, Ozymandias-style, and destroy things if need be? Aren’t there people in poverty who deserve our attention over artefacts?

If Venice is sinking, it is because she always has been. She is built on stilts submerged in the muck of the water – the caranto formed by alternate layers of sand and clay – which slowly subside with the inevitable passage of time. What would Darwin make of our attempts to maintain this patently inapt and inadaptable regime – is it like saving the Kiwi?

So yes, it is like a theme park, and it’s full of tourists and advertising hoardings – you can’t even see the Bridge of Sighs because the iconic structure has been prostituted to the marketing dollar.

Italian hilltop towns

San Leo is a beautiful little town with a massive fortress atop a rock. The town itself has cobbled streets, hills and steps, and a square with a fountain enclosed with shops and restaurants. The food is a delight in these wee villages and just what you think holiday cuisine should be – spaghetti al pomodoro e basilica and a bottle of healthy red wine (well, it’s full of anti-oxidants so they tell me).

From the fortress there are commanding views of the countryside, so you can see any potential attackers. There are parade grounds and turrets, narrow steep staircases, tiny rooms used for cells, small windows for firing ammunition and wooden doors with thick clunky bolts.

Various items are displayed: suits of armour, cannons and guns, used right up to the Second World War; medical apparatus and herbs as discoveries were made to heal and cure; and instruments of torture to harm and wound – even more thought has gone into this. Cruel spikes, heavy irons, sharp blades, evil spikes and barbs, stretching racks and wheels are all enclosed in dim, underground punishment cells.

Feeling ill, we have to be careful not to think about it too much or to imagine the pain. Back in the streets of the sleepy little village it feels an age away from such horrors and we sit against a sun-warmed wall eating gelati while a black and white cat slinks about our legs.

Tavullia is the home of Valentino Rossi, number 46 motorbike rider and, according to Sports Illustrated, one of the highest earning sports personalities in the world, having earned an estimated $34 million in 2007. You know this is his birthplace as soon as you enter the little town; there are banners everywhere and all of the trees sport yellow ribbons – it’s his colour, apparently.

There is a fan club with a shrine to the great (little) man featuring a bike, a leather suit, a whole load of photos and a guest book to sign. A shop sells every kind of Rossi-related tat imaginable – little figurines and helmets; clothing; mouse-mats; key rings; wallets; magnets; bedspreads; everything!

The local café has yet more photos and delivers cappuccinos to the table with 46 written on the top in chocolate and froth.

The speed limit here was recently lowered from 50 to 46kph, and there is one of those LED signs that flashes up your speed as you drive past. I stand and watch as grown men, who really ought to know better, steady their speed to make the sign display 46 as they drive beneath it.


San Marino – the guide books say, ‘Tis a silly place’, and perhaps it is. Lonely Planet suggests that, ‘you’re unlikely to ever see a greater density of kitsch souvenir stands’. Again, this may be true, but I really liked it!



Another catty comment remarks that it is like one of Rimini’s theme parks – indeed, there are local soldiers in this republic and a palace which they guard, albeit probably not particularly effectively. There are four of them and when we watch them shuffle out to change the guard, one of them nearly drops his dagger. I suspect they are students on a holiday job.

Tiny streets lead up (or down, depending on your perspective) through the republic to three impressive fortresses at the top of the hill. They jut out over sheer cliff faces, connected by ramparts that at times meander through verdant woods – these places are strongly fortified, alright!

There are battlements, heraldic flags, turrets and towers, doorways, gates, portals and secret passages aplenty. Sure, the cobbled streets swarm with tourists buying tat (we pick up a garish fridge magnet – we have a collection – and a replica San Marino football shirt) but there are also leather bags and belts that look like bargains.

This is the place to come if you are in the market for Murano glass and Carnivale masks; liqueurs and jewellery; candles and crossbows. Weapons are everywhere – it seems odd and slightly scary to see quite so many guns casually on display.

Montebello has apparently remained virtually untouched for centuries. When we visit it is slightly eerie: a combination of out of season, midweek, and miserable weather mean that it is deserted. The only signs of life are an old woman carrying a bundle of sticks, an old boy on a bicycle, and a cat curled up on a chair.

We are in search of coffee and there is something that looks like a café but it is on the uninviting side of empty. It’s incredible how unwelcoming closed shutters can be – there’s nothing quite like it. I think they’re delightful, but they can close up a town and make you feel like you don’t belong. I get a feeling that this is like a plague town – sealed and evacuated. Picturesque though it is, I can imagine zombies creeping out of the narrow alleyways and I am glad to move on.

Verruchio was apparently chosen as an ideal place to live over 3,000 years ago by early settlers who appreciated its strategic position, on top of a hill with great surrounding views. It was the home of the Malatesta family – the dynasty that ruled the Rimini area from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

I have the best panini I think I’ve ever tasted – cheese, tuna, mayonnaise and tomato – simple fresh food and simply delicious. Once again there is no one on the streets and we have the place to ourselves. It is cold and begins to rain so we do some speed tourism, racing around the town from church to monastery to tower while our map gets soggy.