Venice has an abundance of many things. Water, obviously. Tourists, clearly. Dimly lit calle and dripping sottoporteghi. Gondolas. Art. And graffiti. There's a lot of self expression in Venice.
This particular piece of plebeian art was right outside the window of our first floor rooms at the B&B Accademia in Dorsoduro, and during our short stay here we grew to quite like it. It acted as a landmark, assuring us that we'd turned the right corner on the way back; reminding us to turn left as we left in the morning. Appearing mainly on temporary structures, the graffiti comes and goes, appropriately transient in a city of such crumbling history which is itself passing away, and might not even remain in as few as fifty years, they say. What Venice may no longer have in abundance is time. In the comfortable rooms of this lovely old bed and breakfast the polished parquet floors, the original shutters, the heavy door furniture, even the creaks and groans seem stoically rooted in the past, as if denying the prospect of such an insubstantial future.
We fell asleep to the sounds of the evening's last vaporetto chugging away into the night, and woke to the morning's first, noisily disgorging its passengers into the alley below our window. The autumn days when we were there were damp and grey, only occasionally broken by a pale, ineffectual sun. We opened the French doors of the breakfast room hopefully one morning, only to close them against the chill before we'd finished our coffee. It was that time of year when a shroud of quiet melancholy seems to fall over the city (and nowhere does melancholy like Venice), as if in mourning for summer past. Or maybe in mourning for Venice itself. The swell slapped the gondolas on the Riva degli Shiavoni and a keen wind blew in off the lagoon. The gondoliers had put on their coats and pulled up their collars. By mid afternoon in the Campo Santa Margherita the few stallholders had begun to pack up and head for home, leaving only puddles of water where they had cleaned down their stalls and a dog snuffling for scraps. In the empty Rialto fish market at dusk the heavy red tarpaulins between the pillars snapped and billowed in the breeze. At night our footsteps echoed along the alleys, filled with the foggy yellow light of the city's lamps, and with black shadows. Venice's ghosts surge easily in on nights like this.
Perhaps one day, maybe sooner rather than later, they'll have the city to themselves again.
Accademia Bed and Breakfast, Dorsoduro 1054, Venice
Tel 041 5221 113
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