The Heart of Venice

Venice is one of the most famous cities on earth. There are so many reasons for this – its network of mysterious canals, the glorious palaces, the narrow winding streets ending in secret courtyards. It is beautiful, and it is ingenious. How can an entire city exist in the middle of a tidal lagoon? Venice has fascinated visitors – and even its own residents – for more than a thousand years, and it will fascinate you.

Walking through the heart of Venice we will see the three cardinal points that connected Venice’s life, not only its everyday functioning but how it governed an empire stretching beyond Constantinople. And along the way, we will see how everyday life is lived in a place without cars, built on 118 little islands knitted together by 435 bridges.

We start in the Piazza San Marco, the city’s largest square and focal point. Here is the resplendent basilica of San Marco, the city’s patron saint, representing Venice’s religious life. Next to it is the palace of the doge (that’s “duke” in the Venetian language), where the elected noble ruler lived and where all of the government activities were conducted, from criminal trials to state dinners to the endless work of committees running a city as well as an empire, overseeing everything from foreign wars to repairing the streets.

Our path leads us to the top of the famed Rialto Bridge stretching across the Grand Canal. Rialto was the financial and commercial hub of the Venetian world. Here the sale of exotic spices, silks, ivory and diamonds, fruit and fish, insurance and bank loans were the order of the day. Today the market still sells fruit and fish (as well as diamonds and spices, if that’s what you’re looking for). Along the way we will see places recalling historic events, rebellions and attempted coups; remarkable individuals who shaped European history, and we’ll also see daily life going on that even today is not drastically different than it was centuries ago. (Yes, there were tourists even back then.)

On this Venice tour you will have the chance to:

• Hear how Saint Mark became the young city’s patron saint through a cunning trick played by two Venetian merchants
• Meet Nicolo “barattieri,” the engineer in the 12th century who figured out how to raise the two solid-granite columns at the entrance to the Piazza San Marco
• Admire the memorial to the “old lady with the mortar” who in 1310 suddenly foiled the coup plotted by three young rebellious noblemen See the cannonball recalling Venice’s failed uprising in 1848 against the Austrian occupying forces
• Discover the plaque honoring Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, who in 1678 became the first woman ever to receive a university diploma
• See the first scientific device installed to measure the height of the tides in the Grand Canal almost 200 years ago

As you stroll the streets in the morning you might see the clever way that the carts collecting the trash are emptied into the big barges that take it away. Watch how the gondolas gliding along almost every canal are rowed with one oar in the particularly effective Venetian way. If you’re thirsty, try the famous local drink, the “spritz,” made of white wine, sparkling water, and a slightly bitter flavoring called Aperol. Whatever your preference, I will suggest places where you can stop to rest or refresh along the way.

Come with me to walk the Heart of Venice you’ll find yourself immersed in a city that has been the home of so many extraordinary people and events, from the past and up to today, that it seems impossible that they all fit into such a tiny area.