X Close

What snobs get wrong about Venice We are chasing an illusion of authenticity

Behind Venice's masque. (MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images)

Behind Venice's masque. (MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images)


December 28, 2023   4 mins

Venice has a cruel habit of defeating her admirers. Even her most confident suitors, who arrive via water taxi intent on enjoying all her charms and treasures, return home heavy with second-rate vongole and the humiliation of that unseen Titian. I was left in tears on a Venetian quayside when, after a long day of sight-seeing, I thought I had missed the once-a-day boat crossing to San Francesco del Deserto, the mystical island that Saint Francis had visited on his way back from Africa.

Luckily, there’s a cure for our heartache: Venice for Pleasure. This irreverent guidebook by the English art historian J.G. Links promises “a guide to the pleasures of Venice without its pains”, which, in our era of frantic mini-breaks — of Instagramming and TikToking our way around as many must-see landmarks as possible — is a marvel and a revelation.

“Very few travellers seem to enjoy their first visit to Venice,” Links cautions. “They are awed, dazzled, overwhelmed… [but] above all, they are exhausted by it; physically, mentally and emotionally, its assault is too much for the ordinary human being to withstand.” This is a book for that wild curiosity: a tourist in pure pursuit of pleasure. If they follow Links, they may end up skipping their three-hour tour of the Doge’s Palace, but “Venice will have woven its spell around them, and they will be captives for life.”

Links asks just one thing: that everyone be a walker, “or, at least, a dawdler”. And that is because his guide consists of four narrated walks around Venice, from the shimmering Zattere to the lonely Cannaregio. The streets, Links says, have “a miraculous spring in the paving which makes fatigue almost impossible”. And he is careful to stop at “as many cafes as possible” for coffee or apéritif, from where he enchants us with stories and architectural details about nearby palaces, churches and bell towers contemplating collapse.

With Links as a guide, the idea that Venice is somehow not real — that it is a circus, a Disneyland, a fossil — is banished. On my own strolls, I have seen drowsy postmen loading Amazon parcels onto little delivery boats at dawn; babbling Venetians spilling out of a bar onto the canal, eating baccalà mantecato and drinking wine from paper cups; families fleeing the stink of the summer to the furthest beach on the Lido; a seagull losing a brawl with a lagoon squid, turning the water jet black; a distressed elderly gentleman who has misplaced a valuable miniature he was hoping to sell. This is not a city without a soul.

There is another side to Venice: the merciless tour guides; the menageries of Murano glass animals; the overpriced, often-disappointing food (there is nothing worse than that fearful “delicacy”, the Venetian soft-shell crab, plucked from its squalid existence on the lagoon floor for your displeasure). Even Jan Morris, a lifelong admirer, admitted to feeling that tourism was “in some sense a prostitution of a great city, a degradation, a shame”.

But who’s to say that this carnival of profit isn’t real in its own way? The Venetians have been playing this same game since the 16th century, when, long after their blood-soaked earnings from the Crusades dried up, Venice devoted herself to readying pilgrims for the Holy Land. The piazza was full of Venetians flogging guidebooks, insecticides, and religious tat. Five centuries on, they’re still at it — and next Spring, we’ll be charged €5 entry to the city.

Earlier this year, my devoutly romantic friend took a photograph of a gondolier teaching his son to row in the moonlight: passing down his trade to the next generation. If he were canny, he would have also advised his boy on how to squeeze the most money out of unsuspecting tourists. But would this have made the scene any less remarkable? Any less Venetian? Certainly not.

There is a strong case in Venice for leaning into the artifice, for ditching our snobby disdain for anything that feels touristy. It is the burden of the Brit in Italy to live in dread of encountering a fellow countryman: to be sat next to another British tourist in a restaurant is the ultimate catastrophe. But what do we gain from this manic pursuit of authenticity? And what counts as an “authentic” experience abroad anyway? Is it to surround yourself with Venetians chatting and drinking in Campo Santa Margherita — even if the most you can say in Italian is ciao bella? Perhaps we’re simply chasing an illusion.

Nowhere is this question more relevant than in the gold-leaf excess of Florian’s Cafe in San Marco. I went there one morning on the advice of Links (whose book is, admittedly, now a little behind on the cafe scene), and was so horrified at the thought of paying €12 for a hot chocolate, only to sit amid a throng of fellow tourists goggling and waving selfie sticks, that I upped and left. I later regretted it. Florian’s, I imagine, has been fleecing foreigners for 300 years. It is hardly inauthentic.

In fact, having lost her empire, Venice revelled in her duplicity, fashioning herself a new role as entertainer of the world. “Venice had given herself over to pleasure — but she still made it good business,” Links writes of the 18th century. “Her pageants and carnivals, her theatres and balls, were as much designed to attract the tourists as to make the Venetians themselves forget past glories.”

Yet Venice never let herself fade completely into gilded irrelevance. Even now, she is more than just a honeymoon city, a reliquary of bygone beauty. She is the home of the Biennale, the Film Festival, the Peggy Guggenheim collection, and a mother to the finest exhibitions of Venetian art. It is part of the fun to walk into a prim-looking church, only to find soft-porn playing above the altar, with humourless aesthetes watching from Play-Doh beanbags. Venice is both the art world’s greatest muse — and its harshest critic.

For Jan Morris, this was never enough. She dreamed that the city would once again become a noble marketplace. “East and West might meet once more,” she writes in Venice, “to fuse their philosophies at last, and settle their squalid bickerings… Venice is made for greatness, a God-built city, and her obvious destiny is mediation. She only awaits a summons.” It’s a beguiling vision, and one that could perhaps inspire Britain too, as it struggles to accept its waning status in the world.

As for the “perennial tourist”, we have begun a love affair with Venice that will last a lifetime — unless, like all the great romances, she sinks before we do. We can choose whether to drink hot chocolate at Florian’s or to amble along the quiet streets of Dorsoduro, knowing that each experience is just as authentic; just as Venetian. Because Venice has always been an exhibitionist. And in Venice, as in life, it is often the performance that is most real.


Olivia Ward-Jackson is a Commissioning Editor at UnHerd.

Olivia_WJ98

Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

20 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
11 months ago

It’s interesting how the Romantic conception of Venice has won out in Western culture, when for most of its 1300-year history it’s been a city populated by a race of profoundly hard-headed people who sold anything anyone would buy, used the cash to buy everything they could, and stole everything else they couldn’t, or that wasn’t nailed down. When your city fathers refuse to draw the line at stealing saints, you know you’re dealing with some seriously hardcore materialists.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
11 months ago

A charming article. Thank you, Olivia.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
11 months ago

A very perceptive and well crafted article. Links is by far the best guide, but it is also well worth reading John Julius Norwich’s great history before boarding the train – you simply must arrive by train.

Frederick Dixon
Frederick Dixon
11 months ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

No! You must arrive by sea in the great Mistress of the Adriatic.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
11 months ago

In a three masted schooner, the rigging singing, the sails flapping. and the glorious sounds of creaking woodwork under your feet. Not by motor or steam.

Geoff Cooper
Geoff Cooper
11 months ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

I’ve never been and always wanted to, but now, in my 60’s I’ve come to accept that I’ll probably never see Venice, even in January it would be an utter nightmare. No, Venice will remain a dream city for me now.

Elaine Giedrys-Leeper
Elaine Giedrys-Leeper
11 months ago
Reply to  Geoff Cooper

Au contraire. Venice in late November / early December and January / February can be pretty magical – foggy, bum freezingly cold, cutting winds if you turn down the wrong alleyway BUT minimal interlopers and still plenty of welcoming hostelries large and small where you can warm up. Highly recommended.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Ruskin’s ‘The Stones of Venice’ is also useful, if somewhat bulky by modern standards.

Julian Newman
Julian Newman
11 months ago

You should also stay in the Pensione Calcina (Ruskin describes it as “a little inn, fronting the Giudecca [canal]”). Ruskin was staying there in 1877 when he wrote his impassioned letters to Count Zorzi supporting the nobleman’s passionate protests against the “restoration” of St Mark’s and offering his own watercolours made on earlier visits as evidence of the harm which restorers had already committed. After Ruskin’s death Zorzi persuaded the civic authorities to place a wonderful memorial plaque to Ruskin on the facade of La Calcina. Take with you a copy of Sarah Quill’s superb book “Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones Revisited” – a wonderful combination of text, photographs and reproductions.

Arkadian Arkadian
Arkadian Arkadian
11 months ago

Beautiful though it is, Venice is indeed a theme park. It has been so since the 1800’s. Does it make it less authentic? Most certainly this is now its “authentic” reality (along with the centre of Rome or Florence) but it isn’t the one the tourist is chasing, though.
If you look for something that hasn’t quite morphed yet into a theme park YET, I would suggest Naples and Palermo; allow plenty of time to enjoy them (and Pompeii and, especially, Sorrento can wait), but make haste before it is too late.

J Bryant
J Bryant
11 months ago

I suspect what many tourists are seeking in Venice, Rome, Naples, is something that looks and feels like a Merchant Ivory movie, or, better yet, “Enchanted April”. All lush scenery and haunting music–an extended fin de siècle sigh before the onslaught of modernity, or something equally escapist.

Arkadian Arkadian
Arkadian Arkadian
11 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Enchanted April *is* lovely, though. Who wouldn’t want to go there… 😉

Louise Kowitch
Louise Kowitch
11 months ago

If you read some history and fiction about Venice, the Italian city-states, Byzantium and the rise of modern capitalism, you can easily dispel the myths and walk through the city charmed and engaged. Braudel, Mann, Hammarfelt. Also, view some art before e.g. Canaletto and during e.g Gugenheim Venice.

El Uro
El Uro
11 months ago

I remember the bright light coming from my wife’s eyes on the day we first arrived in Venice.
Both that day and the next I saw these women with huge shining eyes.
Take a woman who has never been to Venice, bring her there without giving her time to come to her senses, put her on that stupid water bus and enjoy her dazed eyes.

Elaine Giedrys-Leeper
Elaine Giedrys-Leeper
11 months ago

Wander off and get lost.
This technique has been working for us for about 10 years now and seems to be city independent – by that I mean it seems to work everywhere. Guaranteed to provide some sort of surprise.

jane baker
jane baker
11 months ago

Is good in Paris too but have a paper map on you,just in case your pleasant lostness starts to turn into panicky,sweaty,no sign of any bus stops,metro stops or taxis lost. Oddly enough that happened to me years ago in an unfamiliar area of MY HOME CITY where I live! Should I take a right or left turn. I chose wrong and ended up walking what felt like miles. Later looking on a map (pre Google maps) I saw there was a bus stop just round the corner the other way so I learned from that and I always have a local map on me if I start to feel a bit too lost,in a not fun way. We all have Google maps now too of course,but I like to have both options.

Last edited 11 months ago by jane baker
Alan Thorpe
Alan Thorpe
11 months ago

Venice may have been built for greatness, but it was built from trade. When the Doges became greedy and wanted a share and started to control who could trade the rot set in. Now it has become a theme park. Venice is a warning of what will happen to the rest of the West unless it returns to free, completive trade.

Arthur G
Arthur G
11 months ago
Reply to  Alan Thorpe

Venice lost its trade because of the discovery of the sea routes to Asia that undercut its trade through the Islamic world. Free trade has absolutely destroyed Western industrial economies over the last 30 years. Why do you think the middle class is disappearing? In wealthy countries free trade inevitably benefits owners of capital at the expense of the owners of labor; i.e. it makes the rich richer, and the working classes poorer.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
11 months ago
Reply to  Arthur G

Agree.
The persistence of theories that contradict reality (like fundamentalist free trade) is getting to be a bit frightening.

Last edited 11 months ago by laurence scaduto
Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
6 months ago
Reply to  Arthur G

That is pure unadulterated rubbish frankly! The world – that means the world’s population – has grown massively richer because of globalism. Have there been winners and losers, certainly yes. Indeed paying people to do nothing on a massive scale isn’t a great strategy. I presume you think we ought to ban the importation of iPhones.

Protectionism has proved an absolute disaster in many cases, including in Franco’s Spain which saw no economic environment whatsoever for two decades, until it did start opening up its economy. Much the same could be said about India.