Venice-5 Things Not to Miss
Venice is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, with its large collection of beautiful churches, museums and the world famous canals and the awesome experience of travelling leisurely on a boat enjoying the magnificent views the city has to offer. Founded fifteen hundred years ago on a cluster of mudflats in the centre of the lagoon, Venice rose to become Europes main trading post between the West and the East. Cohabiting with the ocean, Venice has a closer relationship to nature than most cities, but at the same time its one of the most artificial places on earth. Here is my pick of 5 things not to miss when you go to Venice.
The Basilica di San Marco
San Marco is the most exotic of Europes cathedrals and one of the most visited ones. The combination of ancient structure and later decorations is, to a great extent, what makes San Marco so bewildering.The Gothic arches and carvings on the roofline of the main facade are not what you would expect to see on top of squat, rounded Byzantine arches, and the garish seventeenth to nineteenth-century mosaics that dominate this front must be the worst aesthetic mismatch in all Italy. But this exactly is what makes this church a perplexing architectural miracle.
The porphyry figures of the Tetrarchs and the horses of San Marco. The Main facade, the North and South facades. On the main facade, the only mosaic to survive is the scene above the Porta di Sant Alipio, The Arrival of the Body of St Mark.
The Accademia
You can see one of Europes finest specialized art collections in the famous Gallerie dell Accademia. San Along with Marco and the Palazzo Ducale, the Accademia completes the triad of obligatory tourist sights in Venice. The icon-like Byzantine influenced figures of Paolo Veneziano, works by Giovanni Bellini, Cima da Conegliano and Vittore Carpaccio forms the priceless collection of this gallery. Carpaccios strange Crucifixion and Glorification of the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Mount Ararat is the most gruesome painting here. Works from the Italian giants Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese also finds space here.
This gallery houses works from two of Venices most significant artistic dynasties, the Vivarini and Bellini families.Giovanni Bellini is represented by the intense portrait of The Blessed Lorenzo Giustinian, while Vivarini by the Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, John the Baptist,Dominic and Peter. Another remarkable work here is Carpaccios Story of St Ursula, painted for the Scuola di Sant Orsola at San Zanipolo.
San Giorgio Maggiore
Lets move to see one of the most fabulous views of Venice. Palladios church of San Giorgio Maggiore facing the Palazzo Ducale across the Bacino di San Marco, is one of the most prominent and familiar of all Venetian landmarks. It is a startling building, whose isolation almost forces you to have an opinion as to its architectural merits. The Venetians were the first to cover church interiors with white stucco, and the technique is used to dazzling effect in San Giorgio.
The most compelling feature of this building is the campanile, which stands on the churchs summit. The San Giorgio campanile surpasses that of San Marco as the best vantage point in Venice, because it has the advantage of being slightly detached from the main part of the city, giving you a panorama that includes many of the canals and magnificent buildings.
Possagno
My fourth pick is the famous sculpture habitat Possagno. As you approach Possagno, a small town lodged at the base of Monte Grappa, one of the strangest sights in the Veneto hits you a huge temple that rises above the houses like a displaced chunk of ancient Rome. It was built by Antonio Canova, one of the dominant figures of Neoclassicism and the last Italian sculptor to be generally regarded as the most accomplished living practitioner of his art. Shortly after Canovas death in 1822, all the working models that had accumulated in his studio in Rome were transported to Possagno, and here, an annexe (the Gipsoteca) was built onto the Canova house for the display of the bulk of the collection.
Canovas range will make surprise you because of its variety. You will find portraits, images of classical heroes, the funerary monument for Maria Christina of Austria, and a large Deposition, a bronze version of which is to be found in the Tempio. Canovas skill in depicting the intense feelings is brought to light by two overpowering tableaux of violence, each over 3m high, Hercules and Lichas and Theseus and the Centaur , while the adjoining room, tastefully added in 1957 by Carlo Scarpa, displays a more intimate and even erotic side, including a Sleeping Nymph and the famous Graces.
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
Venice is underendowed with paintings by Titian, its most illustrious artist.Apart from the Accademia and the Salute, the Frari is the only building in Venice with more than a single first-rate work by him.
Titians Assumption ,is well places for us to see as we look towards the high altar through the monks choir. A piece of compositional and colouristic bravura for which there was no precedent in Venetian art, no previous altarpiece had emphasized the vertical axis over the horizontal.
The Assumption, nevertheless fits its surroundings perfectly. The spiralling motion of the Apostles and the Virgin complements the vertical movement of the surrounding architecture, an integration that is strengthened by the coincidence between the division of the paintings two major groupings and the division of the windows in the chancel. The other Titian masterpiece here, the Madonna di Ca Pesaro was equally innovative in its displacement of the figure of the Virgin from the centre of the picture.
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