Stones Of Venice Quotes

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.

The next week passed in a haze of mourning, as thick and disorienting as the unrelenting fog that crept over the stones of Venice each morning.

He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.

I imagined myself a bird, looking down on our city, the Grand Canal like a snake slithering through stone, the city on either side like two hands clasped in prayer

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.

We stood for a moment, the brackish canal water teething at the stone,the last of the stars fading as the sky transformed from black to indigo. A pair of swans like large white clouds floated on the water, their heads tucked under their wings, as a gondola pulled up, a lantern on the prow, the gondolier on the stern, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

The Doctor: I just don’t like nastiness, and people getting away with it. Churchwell: That sounds a rather, if you forgive me, innocent view. The Doctor: That’s as may be, but I’m sticking to it.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

I do think there’s always a way to put things right. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning, I wouldn’t eat breakfast; I wouldn’t leave the TARDIS ever. I would never have left home. There is always something we can do.

You've got to see Venice," he began. "You've got to see a city of slender towers and white domes, sleeping in the water like a mass of water lilies. You've got to see dark waterways, mysterious threads of shadow, binding all these flowers of stone together.

By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

I believe that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothic are the following, placed in the order of their importance: 1. Savageness; 2. Changefulness; 3. Naturalism; 4. Grotesqueness; 5. Rigidity; 6. Redundance.

Understand this clearly: you can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.

The mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.

Thus it transpired that even Berlin could be mysterious. Within the linden's bloom the streetlight winks. A dark and honeyed hush envelops us. Across the curb one's passing shadow slinks: across a stump a sable ripples thus. The night sky melts to peach beyond that gate. There water gleams, there Venice vaguely shows. Look at that street--it runs to China straight, and yonder star above the Volga glows! Oh, swear to me to put in dreams your trust, and to believe in fantasy alone, and never let your soul in prison rust, nor stretch your arm and say: a wall of stone.

The experts are right, he thought. Venice is sinking. The whole city is slowly dying. One day the tourists will travel here by boat to peer down into the waters, and they will see pillars and columns and marble far, far beneath them, slime and mud uncovering for brief moments a lost underworld of stone. Their heels made a ringing sound on the pavement and the rain splashed from the gutterings above. A fine ending to an evening that had started with brave hope, with innocence. ("Don't Look Now")

The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, ridgidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom,--a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom,--is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyse vitality.

I never heard a passion so confused, So strange, outrageous, and so variable, As the dog Jew did utter in the streets: 'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter! A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter! And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, Stolen by my daughter! Justice! find the girl; She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats.

And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, to a low wharf or quay at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation; another glance undeceives us, --it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy.

Ruskin’s, whose Stones of Venice

Beyond this point on the river Cambridge became a kind of miniature Venice, its river water lapping up against the ancient stone of college walls, here mottled and reddened brick, there white stone. Stained, lichened, softened by water light. Here the river became a great north-south tunnel, a gothic castle from the river, flanked by locked iron gates, steps leading nowhere, labyrinths, trapdoors, landing stages where barges had unloaded their freight: crates of fine wines, flour, oats, candles, fine meats carried into the damp darkness of college cellars.

The fact is, that, of all God’s gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn…The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.

The quality of Venice that accomplishes what religion so often cannot is that Venice has made peace with the waters. It is not merely pleasant that the sea flows through, grasping the city like tendrils of vine, and, depending upon the light, making alleys and avenues of emerald and sapphire, Citi s a brave acceptance of dissolution and an unflinching settlement with death. Though in Venice you may sit in courtyards of stone, and your heels may click up marble stairs, you cannot move without riding upon or crossing the waters that someday will carry you in dissolution to the sea.

Why, then, do you go there at such a season?" my editor asked me once, sitting in a Chinese restaurant in New York, with his gay English charges. "Yes, why do you ?" they echoed their prospective benefactor. "What is it like there in winter ?" I thought of telling them about acqua alta; about the various shades of gray in the window as one sits for breakfast in one's hotel, enveloped by silence and the mealy morning pall of newlyweds' faces; about pigeons accentuating every curve and cornice of the local Baroque in their dormant affinity for architecture; about a lonely monument to Francesco Querini and his two huskies carved out of Istrian stone, similar, I think, in its hue, to what he saw last, dying, on his ill-fated journey to the North Pole, now listening to the Giardini's rustle of evergreens in the company of Wagner and Carducci; about a brave sparrow perching on the bobbing blade of a gondola against the backdrop of a sirocco-roiled damp infinity. No, I thought, looking at their effete but eager faces; no, they won't do. "Well, I said, "it's like Greta Garbo swimming.

But all of a sudden the scene changed; it was the memory, no longer of old impressions but of an old desire, only recently reawakened by the Fortuny gown in blue and gold, that spread before me another spring, a spring not leafy at all but on the contrary suddenly stripped of its trees and flowers by the name that I had just murmured to myself: “Venice”; a decanted springtime, which is reduced to its own essence and expresses the lengthening, the warming, the gradual unfolding of its days in the progressive fermentation, no longer, now, of an impure soil, but of a blue and virginal water, springlike without bud or blossom, which could answer the call of May only by the gleaming facets fashioned and polished by May, harmonising exactly with it in the radiant, unalterable nakedness of its dusky sapphire. Likewise, too, no more than the seasons to its flowerless creeks, do modern times bring any change to the Gothic city; I knew it, even if I could not imagine it, or rather, imagining it, this was what I longed for with the same desire which long ago, when I was a boy, in the very ardour of departure, had broken and robbed me of the strength to make the journey: to find myself face to face with my Venetian imaginings, to observe how that divided sea enclosed in its meanderings, like the sinuosities of the ocean stream, and urbane and refined civilization, but one that, isolated by their azure girdle, had evolved independently, had had its own schools of painting and architecture, to admire that fabulous garden of fruits and birds in coloured stone, flowering in the midst of the sea which kept it refreshed, lapped the base of the columns with its tide, and, like a somber azure gaze watching in the shadows, kept patches of light perpetually flickering on the bold relief of the capitals.

. . . no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. . . . no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cogwheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves....On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness; all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also, and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds settling upon him.

Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of shame.

The experts are right, he thought, Venice is sinking. The whole city is slowly dying. One day the tourists will travel here by boat to peer down into the waters, and they will see pillars and columns and marble far, far beneath them, slime and mud uncovering for brief moments a lost underworld of stone.

This first period includes the Rise of Venice, her noblest achievements, and the circumstances which determined her cha* Hist- def Rep. Ital., vol. i. ch. v. f Appendix 3.: "Serra r Del t "Ha Maputo trove mo do Che non uni, non pooch, non molt i, ma molt i bubonic, pooch migliori, e insiememente, ultimo solo."— Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom

It can be met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labor are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labor.

The fortnight in Venice passed quickly and sweetly- perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless. On some days life kept pace with the gondola, as we nosed through the side canals and the boatman uttered his plaintive musical bird-cry of warning; on other days with the speed-boat bouncing over the lagoon in a stream of sun-lit foam; it left a confused memory of fierce sunlight on the sands and cool, marble interiors; of water everywhere, lapping on smooth stone, reflected in a dapple of light on painted cielings; of a night at the Corombona palace such as Byron might have known, and another Byronic night fishing for scampi in the shallows of Chioggia, the phosphorescent wake of the little ship, the lantern swinging in the prow, and the net coming up full of weed and sand and floundering fishes; of melon and prosciutto on the balcony in the cool of the morning; of hot cheese sandwiches and champagne cocktails at Harrys Bar.

Why, then, do you go there at such a season?" my editor asked me once, sitting in a Chinese restaurant in New York, with his gay English charges. "Yes, why do you ?" they echoed their prospective benefactor. "What is it like there in winter ?" I thought of telling them about acqua alta; about the various shades of gray in the window as one sits for breakfast in one's hotel, enveloped by silence and the mealy morning pall of newlyweds' faces; about pigeons accentuating every curve and cornice of the local Baroque in their dormant affinity for architecture; about a lonely monument to Francesco Querini and his two huskies carved out of Istrian stone, similar, I think, in its hue, to what he saw last, dying, on his ill-fated journey to the North Pole, now listening to the Giardini's rustle of evergreens in the company of Wagner and Carducci; about a brave sparrow perching on the bobbing blade of a gondola against the backdrop of a sirocco-roiled damp infinity. No, I thought, looking at their effete but eager faces; no, they won't do. "We;;, I said, "it's like Greta Garbo swimming.

How often, I thought to myself, had I lain thus in a hotel room, in Vienna or Frankfurt or Brussels, with my hand clasped under my head, listening not to the stillness, as in Venice, but to the roar of the traffic, with a mounting sense of panic. That, then, I thought on such occasions, is the new ocean. Ceaselessly, in great surges, the waves roll in over the length and breadth of our cities, rising higher and higher, breaking in a kind of frenzy when the roar reaches its peak and then discharging across the stones and the asphalt even as the next onrush is being released from where it was held by the traffic lights.

It rained on the day of my dad’s funeral. Folk here are born with waterproof skin and a double set of eyelids like a trout. But I’ve seen nowt like it before. Wherever the ground dipped it turned to a puddle, and wherever there was a puddle it turned to a lake and the lakes turned to seas and every road became a river and the fields became swimming baths and the sheep became swimmers and the village of Bewrith became Venice and every window was now a door and every car was now a stepping stone and after three hundred years of standing, Bewrith Bridge was torn out its banks and villagers came to wave it off down the River Pishon like the launch of some royal ship only they drank from bottles of whisky instead of smashing them.

Mathias remembered that once when he was a boy, he'd gone up to a pile of red apples that lay in the market cart, in the market near Stolberg where his father often took him. He'd always loved apples, and he couldn't resist the temptation of grabbing one out of the pile. He chose the closest, a splendid red piece of fruit that he would never forget because of his overwhelming desire to take it and hide it in the folds of his clothing. A moment after Mathias reached out and snatched it, the pile slid and applies tumbled down all around him. The farmer, who knew his father, would have been satisfied with an apology. But his father, a successful craftsman who was well-known and respected in the town, had insisted on purchasing an entire basketful of apples, because of the trouble Mathias had caused. Mathias got the worst scolding his father had ever given him. Not because of the money, but for the small act of petty thievery, which an upright man like his father would never tolerate. He shouldered his punishment, and in the end was only allowed to eat as single apple from the basket. He spent the night thinking about the pile. He had to remove only one and the whole thing had come down. He wondered if the same thing might happen with any tower, no matter how majestic and imposing it might seem, were someone to remove the right stone from the base. The thought stayed with him throughout his life. Venice now seemed a lot like that pile of apples. If three murders truly represented an irresistible opportunity, then which nobleman would have seized it, knowing that such a thing would cause La Serenissima and everything it represented to come crashing down?

Where are the Jews in Henry James?” Paul challenged, looking up at him with a little smile. “Last I checked there were no Jews in Henry James.” Daryl was dry. “And why not?” Paul answered. “There were Jews everywhere around him. In London, in Venice. Certainly in New York—” “Go on.” “And the blacks in Nathaniel Hawthorne? Where are they?” Paul pushed. “That wasn’t his subject,” Daryl retorted. “Exactly.” Paul nodded. “Precisely my point. There are no blacks in Hawthorne because he’d have to see them as real enough, human enough, for him to imagine them, put them in the story.” “Oh, for god’s sake, Paul,” Evie pushed back. “Of course he understood them to be human beings—” “Really? Then where are they?” Evie didn’t answer. “Everyone you can’t see on the surface. That’s the story. But they are buried, implicit.” Paul didn’t miss a beat. “That’s what the stumble stones remind us. We were here.” “And?” Paul turned to Daryl. “What if a place could remember what had happened? What if a place could speak? What if that memory tripped us up in our daily lives?” “Okay.” Daryl looked at him. “Go on.” “What if we had said what we had done here?” Paul went on. “Like the Germans. What if this country put down a paving stone for every slave—their names, the places where they arrived, the spot where they were sold—all over the South, in every marketplace in the South? What if this country put what happened in the past right under our feet and said, All right. Look. Look

Dubrovnik, Croatia Dubrovnik’s old architecture, all wrapped within its ancient stone walls, have made this city a World Heritage Site. It’s an old sea port that sits above the Adriatic Sea. Its background, from medieval times was trade between the east and Europe and the city rivalled Venice for its reach and connections. Today, however, the principle economy is based on tourism. The old town is a warren of narrow, cobbled streets, sometimes steep, but pedestrianised which makes it easy to walk. However, be careful – signs do not always point to where they say they are going – many of them are old and the hotels, restaurants, bus stations have moved. The City Walls might look familiar to fans of Game of Thrones – many scenes were filmed here and there are Game of Thrones tours to visit the film’s settings. The area suffered a devastating earthquake in the 17th century, therefore much of the original architecture did not survive. The Sponza Palace, near the Bell Tower, is one of the few Gothic buildings left in the city. The Stradun is the main street in the Old Town – restaurants, shops and bars all pour out onto here. It’s lively, especially towards the end of the day. Don’t forget that the city’s location on the coast means that it also has beautiful beaches. Lapad Beach is two miles outside of town, and has a chilled atmosphere. Banje Beach is closer to the old town. It has an entrance fee and is livelier. One of the reasons Dubrovnok appeals to solo travellers is because it has a low crime rate. In addition, its cobbled streets and artistic shops all make browsing easy.

Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the labourer’s mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it;... And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way. The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom—a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom—is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity.

Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the labourer’s mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it;... And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way. The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom—a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom—is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity.

When at last I feel ready to tackle the whole of the piece, I begin slowly, delighting in the silvery tone of this violin and making my away as I would across the slippery stepping stones in the kitchen garden after a rain.

I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators — Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists — Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion. In Botticelli's paintings, every pebble and every leaf is rendered with a religious devotion; there is reverence inherent in paying such close attention to every stone, turning painting itself into a form of worship, an act of prayer.

ugliest bridge in the city. It was made from iron, did not have a graceful arching form like the famous stone bridges prevalent throughout Venice, and had been placed too low over the water, making it difficult for gondoliers during high tide. Around us, the canal was crowded with boats, the only method of transport in a place with no streets. I’d already decided I didn’t miss them. I much preferred the sleek gondolas, with their singing boatmen, to the clatter of horse and carriage.

Slowly, very slowly, I begin to feel I am at home. Sometimes I step out-of-scene for a moment, checking to see if I find some shabby sense of farce about us. Are we used people pretending to be new? No. The most stringent pulse-taking always reads negative. We are not old. We are at that lush moment just before ripeness, the moment that love suspends in a soft, sustained note of rhapsody. In the cinnamon candlelight and a lengthening tenderness, we strangers live well together in the little dacha. As a couple there is some sense about us that feels like risk, like adventure, like the tight, sharp bubbles of a good Prosecco. Even when we bewilder each other, make each other screaming crazy, there’s a bright metal ring to us like the resonance of something gold and something silver tumbling fast across wet stones. It feels as if we’re living on the eve of a rapture.

There are also examples of petrified wood occurring as a mere product of nature — even without the heat! As an example, Dr. Andrew Snelling recounts: From the other side of the world comes a report of the chapel of Santa Maria of Health (Santa Maria de Salute), built in 1630 in Venice, Italy, to celebrate the end of The Plague. Because Venice is built on water saturated clay and sand, the chapel was constructed on 180,000 wooden pilings to reinforce the foundations. Even though the chapel is a massive stone block structure, it has remained firm since its construction. How have the wooden pilings lasted over 360 years? They have petrified! The chapel now rests on “stone” pilings!

Venice was undoubtedly the most international city of the Renaissance, thanks to its trade, the gatepost between Europe and the East and between Europe and Africa. Englishmen and continental Europeans hoped they could develop navies like the great Venetian fleet, and thus profit from this international trade. Although by the 1590s, when Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice, the wealth of Venice was in fact beginning to fade, its image in Europe was of a golden and luxuriant port. This image of the city Shakespeare could have gleaned from books like the expatriate Italian John Florio’s A World of Words, or through the music of another expatriate, Alfonso Ferrabosco; a little later Shakespeare’s audience would have seen the influences of the great Venetian architect Palladio on the architecture of Inigo Jones. Venetian society appeared as a city of strangers, vast numbers of foreigners who came and went. The Venice which Elizabethans saw in their imagination was a place of enormous riches earned by contact with these heathens and infidels, wealth flowing from dealings with the Other. But unlike ancient Rome, Venice was not a territorial power; the foreigners who came and went in Venice were not members of a common empire or nation-state. Resident foreigners in the city—Germans, Greeks, Turks, Dalmatians, as well as Jews—were barred from official citizenship and lived as permanent immigrants. Contract was the key to opening the doors of wealth in this city of strangers.

I’m writing to you from Venice—can you believe it? It is amazing! I think I want to live here.

When we aren’t aiming to be either precise or conclusive, it can be easy to agree on what a beautiful man-made place might look like. Attempts to name the world’s most attractive cities tend to settle on some familiar locations: Edinburgh, Paris, Rome, San Francisco. A case will occasionally be made for Siena or Sydney. Someone may bring up St Petersburg or Salamanca. Further evidence of our congruent tastes can be found in the patterns of our holiday migrations. Few people opt to spend the summer in Milton Keynes or Frankfurt. Nevertheless, our intuitions about attractive architecture have always proved of negligible use in generating satisfactory laws of beauty. We might expect that it would, by now, have grown as easy to reproduce a city with the appeal of Bath as it is to manufacture consistent quantities of blueberry jam. If humans were at some point adept at creating a masterwork of urban design, it should have come within the grasp of all succeeding generations to contrive an equally successful environment at will. There ought to be no need to pay homage to a city as to a rare creature; its virtues should be readily fitted to the development of any new piece of meadow or scrubland. There should be no need to focus our energies on preservation and restoration, disciplines which thrive on our fears of our own ineptitude. We should not have to feel alarmed by the waters that lap threateningly against Venice’s shoreline. We should have the confidence to surrender the aristocratic palaces to the sea, knowing that we could at any point create new edifices that would rival the old stones in beauty.

I don't know what you're getting yourself into," said Majid, "but I know I don't like it. Some things in Venice are pure poison." Majid's eyes looked like they could bore through a stone wall. "If someone has put you on a demon's tracks, you'd better make sure the demon doesn't find you first." "What's that supposed to mean," asked Mathias. "It means behind every hand stained with blood there's another, and that one stays clean." Majid leaned in close, lowering his voice to a whisper. "What I'm saying is that behind a demon, there's always someone holding the creature on a leash.

There had been no angels or harps or drifting clouds in a perfect blue sky. Instead, there was a city of white stone and dazzling architecture, sort of how Venice might look if they had a tidy up and did something about the smell and the pickpockets. Nonetheless, it had definitely been heaven.

It looks like we’re stuck here for a while,” Cass said, trying not to let her eyes wander down to Falco’s chest. His damp chemise was clinging to his body. The drizzle became a deluge, rain pounding the stone street so hard, it drowned out Falco’s response. Cass leaned in close. “What?” “I said I know someplace nearby we can go. Until the rain stops.” Falco’s lips were so close to her ear that she felt a puff of warm air with each p he spoke. Cass trembled slightly. She told herself it was from the weather, but she turned to face Falco even though it meant putting the right side of her dress out into the storm. His expression was neutral, but his eyes smiled at her. “What sort of place?” “Tommaso’s studio. It’s just a couple of streets over.” Cass watched the rain come down in sheets. “Tommaso?” “Vecellio. He’s my master.” Cass sucked in a deep breath. Tommaso Vecellio was descended from the same bloodlines as Titian, one of the most famous Venetian artists of all time. Titian had died before Cass was born, but his influence lingered in churches and private homes all across Venice. “You apprentice with Vecellio? How come you never told me?” Falco slicked his wet hair back from his face. “You never asked.

It rained on the day of my dad’s funeral. Folk here are born with waterproof skin and a double set of eyelids like a trout. But I’ve seen nowt like it before. Wherever the ground dipped it turned to a puddle, and wherever there was a puddle it turned to a lake and the lakes turned to seas and every road became a river and the fields became swimming baths and the sheep became swimmers and the village of Bewrith became Venice and every window was now a door 75 Scott Preston and every car was now a stepping stone and after three hundred years of standing, Bewrith Bridge was torn out its banks and vil- lagers came to wave it off down the River Pishon like the launch of some royal ship only they drank from bottles of whisky instead of smashing them.

It rained on the day of my dad’s funeral. Folk here are born with waterproof skin and a double set of eyelids like a trout. But I’ve seen nowt like it before. Wherever the ground dipped it turned to a puddle, and wherever there was a puddle it turned to a lake and the lakes turned to seas and every road became a river and the fields became swimming baths and the sheep became swimmers and the village of Bewrith became Venice and every window was now and every car was now a stepping stone and after three hundred years of standing, Bewrith Bridge was torn out its banks and vil- lagers came to wave it off down the River Pishon like the launch of some royal ship only they drank from bottles of whisky instead of smashing them.

It rained on the day of my dad’s funeral. Folk here are born with waterproof skin and a double set of eyelids like a trout. But I’ve seen nowt like it before. Wherever the ground dipped it turned to a puddle, and wherever there was a puddle it turned to a lake and the lakes turned to seas and every road became a river and the fields became swimming baths and the sheep became swimmers and the village of Bewrith became Venice and every window was now a door and every car was now a stepping stone and after three hundred years of standing, Bewrith Bridge was torn out its banks and vil- lagers came to wave it off down the River Pishon like the launch of some royal ship only they drank from bottles of whisky instead of smashing them.