I’ve been told that most tourists visit three cities when they come to Italy: Rome, Florence and Venice. Well, I live in Rome and I recently visited Florence but this, being the beginning of my third year in Italy, has been my opportunity to visit Venice.
Jesse (from La Crosse), Nicholas (from Atlanta) and I (Little Rock) went together and stayed at a fantastic location near San Marco square and basilica. In fact we spent most of our time around or in the basilica because we arrived Friday night, it rained all day Saturday and there were beautiful, clear skies Sunday but we had to leave shortly after lunch in order to return to Rome.
The basilica is named after and contains the remains of St. Mark the Evangelist (the writer of the Gospel of Mark – the oldest of the four Gospels). St. Mark was a companion of St. Peter in Rome, evangelized the city of Venice and traditionally held to be ordained a bishop by St. Peter before St. Mark made his way to Alexandria in Egypt.
In 828 two Venetian merchants found out, as they were venerating the remains of St. Mark in Egypt, that the Church was to be destroyed to be replaced with mosques. To save his body from profanation they moved him to the city he once evangelized, Venice.
The basilica, dating from 1094, has very much an Eastern flare. It was modeled after the Apostoleion of Constantinople (a 6th century church that was destroyed by the Turks in the 15th century) and St. Mark’s treasury holds many artifacts stolen from Constantinople during the fourth Crusade.
Now then, outside of the basilica Jesse, Nicholas and I wondered the extremely narrow streets, stunning canals (with gondolas slowly floating by), visited other churches, saw the famous Rialto bridge over the Grand Canal and tasted the ‘fishy’ culinary surprises that awaited us, which included cuttlefish – something I had to look up after the trip because I wasn’t exactly sure what I had eaten.
The city was extremely commercial and jammed with other tourists but we found some more isolated places and a restaurant that only had menus in Italian, which made for a much more authentic experience.
I was surprised to learn, from Jesse who studied architecture before entering the seminary, that a lot of the architecture found in the city of Venice (particularly by Andrea Palladio) influenced the architecture in the U.S., seen in designs by Thomas Jefferson. We visited Palladio’s last work, St. George’s church on the island of St. George.
Venice is a unique city. It is quite a bit larger than I thought and has more to see and experience than can be done in a weekend. I am blessed to have been able to visit it and the treasures it contains, most especially the rich history of St. Mark’s.
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