Venice: Master of Distraction
Italian style is unmistakable. The meaningful detail; a perfect espresso placed on the bar, the slide of a well cut blazer, the fluid drape of a trouser cuff, and a whisper from your soul to your ear ‘you’ve got this.’
Your style is working it big time. You are not only in the moment. You command it. It becomes your stage set, the setting for a novel or a film only you will write. You enter into it much as the writer does, in the direction of where you imagine it will go but then, since you’re open to mystery, and you don’t take yourself too seriously, it takes you somewhere else with detours along the way, because, in true Italian spirit, you let in the distractions others ignore.
Thank heavens for those surprises that divert us from the predictable. They throw you off course but that’s when the magic walks up and dares you to do something different.
In this regard, Venice is a master navigator. She re-directs you at every turn. Tight narrow streets open up into a piazzetta. Small loping bridges suspend you, only for a moment. You have no choice but to take it all in, and grab the magic before it’s gone.
Expect sunshine and you get fog; a leisurely stroll and you come face to face with an image you can’t shake. Plan your day and ‘La Serenissima’ catapults you into something unexpected.
You’re nine years old and your mother tells you Burano is the island where the rainbow fell because each building is a different color. You watch a lace maker weave a flower into the lace collar your mother will one day sew onto a velvet dress for you.
You’re nineteen. You and a friend are getting ready to go dancing. Just as you get that flip of eyeliner right a song breaks through the chatter. You push open tremendous shutters and there, over the moonlit canal is a regatta of boats. Someone is singing on one of them, and it doesn’t matter who it is.
It’s a snowy December. You’re much older now. You’ve arrived from Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich, from Bernstein conducting Mahler, the winter trails of the Vienna woods, fluffy white duvets, coffee and chocolate torte served by a handsome waiter wearing white gloves inside the Hotel Sacher.
But now, after that perilous drive around the Gotthard pass, you are on a boat leaving a deserted Piazza San Marco under fog and a full moon. The couple, she in red taffeta, he in a tuxedo, both wearing black capes, steps into the boat. You wonder if you’ve walked into a Zefferelli film. And when the boat slows and you stop, the man and woman sweep off onto the dock, capes fluttering behind them.
You look up at the windows of a palazzo. Do you hear music and the clinking of champagne flutes? Because it’s cold and you’re forced to wait you listen to the lapping waters, and you pause to watch the Byzantine – Gothic facade and Moorish arches of the Hotel Danieli lift ever so slowly out of the mist.
PLACES I’VE DISCOVERED IN VENICE WHILE WANDERING…
Ca’ Macana in the Dorsoduro quarter is one of the oldest mask making workshops in Venice. Each mask, made by hand, uses artisanal techniques that date back 800 years. Why not register for a workshop and try your hand at this ancient craft?
Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, in Santa Croce
A workshop where Venice’s most ancient fabric traditions use 18thCentury looms to create gorgeous textiles.
Palazzo Mocenigo
Off the beaten track, a peek into a secret Venice, this enchanting 17thcentury palazzo houses the Merchant of Venice perfume museum, and the Museum of the History of Textile and Costumes.
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