Italy's Disneyland
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Venice,
Italy
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
We found a slightly less expensive accommodation on our first morning in Venice. It was funny to wake up and walk down to the street, where I heard so much English spoken that I may have well been in New York. We saw morning joggers trotting between the crowds. There were foreign peddlers on the streets and bridges, carrying bags of wares and occasionally setting them up on the cobbles. Some were passive, others thrust their trash in the faces of passers-by, even asking them for whatever price they were willing to pay. We struggled along looking for breakfast.
Once I had a measly bun and we split an orange, we let ourselves get nearly lost among the squares and canals. There were hundreds of photos to be taken and views to be admired. We went through the tourist streets and admired carnival masks through the shop windows. There seemed to be endless variety at first, but after a few days I realised that there were only so many templates and that they varied only in colour and decoration. Hundreds of vendors sold t-shirts and shorts, some with vulgar silk-screened images that made us laugh at first and then became tiresome to see so often. Others sold glass figurines, commonly orchestra ensembles in 18th century clothing, done in miniature and yours for 29 Euro per figurine. There are so many souvenirs to choose from.
It really is an amazing city. On a visual level it is stunning. I can't think of many other cities that are so consistently attractive and all conforming to one style. There were no glass and steel monstrosities to ruin the sensation that we had traveled back a few hundred years in time. Without having factual proof in front of me it is circumstantially clear that the Venetian municipal officers are serious about preserving the character of their city. Commercial development seems to be regulated and limited. For example, you have to walk within a block of a McDonald's or a Burger King to see what it is. You can't see the Golden Arches from blocks away.
St. Marco's was a joy to see. The church wasn't what I expected, being a musty and dank cavern with ostentatious golden display. Bro said that it made him think of everything that seems wrong to him about the Roman Church's ideals. Inside that building it's hard to disagree. There is so much wealth on display that only a genius of rhetoric could convince you that this church's faith has anything to do with the poor (except possibly exploiting them). In hindsight, seeing Italian churches from the Middle Ages made me understand so much better what Protestants like Luther were protesting in their break from that church, in a time when millions of malnourished European peasants and dwelt in mud huts and toiled fields to give their meager surplus to a group that built ostentatious monuments that are still far more opulent than anything we are building today. So when I say that St. Marco's was a joy to see, I mean to say that I am happy to see it because it helped me understand history a bit more than I could have had I never seen it.
The other interesting thing inside is the treasury, which contains artifacts that Venetian stole when they sacked Constantinople in the early 13th century. All sorts of Byzantine souvenirs, taken from those medieval leaders are on display in glass cabinets, as well as other curiosities from Asia Minor. Sometimes looking at the table settings of royalty is a chore because there is so much that the displays are a labyrinth of cabinets and the exit is unmarked. But in this instance, it was amazing to see the very few cups and goblets that served the heirs of the Roman Empire of the East. The treasury also contains "holy relics:" bone fragments of Roman Saints. These have been worked into fine displays with fine metallic articulation, but I found them generally disgusting.
Over the hours we spent walking through Venice, I eventually realised that Venice is something like a Disneyland for adults. By the grace of the vanity of the citizens of Venice, who spent a great amount of money beautifying their city and showing off their wealth, they made something of a masterpiece of a city. Economic decline set in after Venice lost its sovereignty and trade routes and the city stagnated. It was thanks to this period that the city hasn't been modernized like many others. Otherwise, period buildings may easily have been torn down and replaced by cheap structures like so many other places in Europe. At some point travelers realised how magnificent it was that Venice was unchanged, and saw Venice as a place to indulge their imaginations and to settle into romantic notions of history. That enterprising spirit of the Venetian awoke from its dormancy and they realised that they still had a monopoly on their city.
$na-$hing!
And so, everything in Venice is an attraction; from the canals to the bridges, the little black boats to the churches, the monuments to the paper maché stores and even the little bronze door knockers in between.
There is so much to see and so many attractions to visit that it is nearly overwhelming. Let me take a little noticed but gorgeous church of St. Paul (it doesn't matter which one) as an example. Of the sixty thousand tourists in Venice on a quiet day, possibly ten thousand walk by. Maybe four hundred stop and look and sixty of them fork over the two Euros fifty to go inside for a closer look. According to my completely uneducated calculation, 0.1% come in to see the place.
But imagine that instead of being in Venice, put this Church of St. Paul it Ljubljana or Belgrade. There, it would be the "# 1 must see attraction" that "100% of visitors must see" and "mindlessly photograph" because it is that city's "sight." Venice has enough attractions that if they were divided up around the world, no one would bother coming to Italy anymore.
The fundamental difference between Venice and every other city is that it is as well prepared for tourists as Disneyland. As far as I can tell, no one lives there for reasons other than tourism anymore. Today the city of sixty thousand residents welcomes (and fleeces) at least as many tourists every day. No one can deny that Venice is a beautiful place. It's marvelous, romantic and imagination spurring like few other places on Earth. It's just not an authentic city anymore. It's become an amusement park for adults.
