A recent trip to Venice revealed a magical city that was a delightful surprise. I had heard mixed reviews of the renowned city and expected a crowded, overrated place that was dirty and foul-smelling. Instead what I found, to my utter pleasure, was a beautiful enclave brimming with artful color and fascinating architecture. The food was wonderful, the shopping inspiring and the history was evident everywhere. It was a photographer’s paradise and my amateur foray into capturing the city is displayed here, along with some of my favorite quotes about this jewel in Italy. Please join me below on this wonderful journey…
“To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.”
Alexander Herzen
“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.”
Truman Capote
“There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.”
Mary Shelley
”It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.”
Erica Jong, ‘Shylock’s Daughter’
“When I seek another word for ‘music’, I never find any other word than ‘Venice’”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty – this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.”
Thomas Mann, ‘Death in Venice’
“If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you’ve imagined. Venice is — Venice is better.”
Fran Lebowitz
“A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.”
Arthur Symons
“Wherever you go in life, you will feel somewhere over your shoulder a pink, castellated shimmering presence, the domes and riggings and crooked pinacles of the Serenissima.”
Jan Morris
“Venice never quite seems real, but rather an ornate film set suspended on the water.”
Frida Giannini
Your photos are just beautiful! One of my very favorite cities! Love the quotes!
Thank you so much, Christina! Venice was such a nice surprise for me. After years of travel to Italy where I kept avoiding the city, thinking it was overrated, it turned out to be a gem! Fun to share with others who feel the same. (I’ve gotten some recent comments on my travel posts reminding me I should do more of them… :-))