Venice Trip: Peggy Guggenheim Collection

All around the city, there were men selling Chicki Chickis, little moldable balls of something. James couldn't resist any longer and bought one.  The next morning, he informed me that the chicki chickis were stuffed with flour.  "Do you know how I know this?" he asked.  He went on to tell us how his burst open in his hotel room upstairs and he ended up with flour all over his shirt and pants.

Google "activities for kids in Venice" and you'll be sure to see the suggestion "Visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection." One website said the museum was "a fabulous collection of surrealist modern art-- perhaps the most interesting sort of art for young minds, with fantastical creatures and landscapes and animals flying through the sky. Outside is a lovely sculpture garden, where kids can run around." We still had a few hours until dinner (it felt much later since we had gotten such an early start this morning) and decided to seek out this museum.

Peggy Guggenheim, an American art collector, was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, founder of The Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Her home in Venice and extensive art collection became a museum after her death in 1979.

I believe Becca could have stood in front of this digital waterfall in the entryway all day if we had let her. She was completely transfixed. We had to drag her away from it when we first arrived and again when it was time for us to leave.

Inside the main building, we saw works by Chagall, Picasso, Dalí, Magritte, and Pollock, but it was the sculpture garden that the kids liked best. Becca and Em posing on a throne sculpture. We assumed that was OK as everyone was taking turns sitting on it.

This long, thin scupture looked to me like a big boot. Only after passing it several times did Dave suddenly exclaim, "Oh, I get it! It's a woman!"

The Wish Tree, an olive tree given to Peggy from Yoko Ono. People write a wish on a little piece of paper and either hang the wishes on the tree, or stuff them among the branches. One scrap of paper lying on the ground, unfolded, displayed a very naughty wish indeed. Finding that particular note was one of the highlights of Micaela and James' visit.

A sculpture that reminded everyone of when Han Solo is frozen at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.

The other highlight of Micaela and James' visit to the museum. This is the 1948 bronze "The Angel of the City" by Marino Marini. Rumor has it that the horse rider originally had a screw-in demountable phallus so that it could be removed in order to avoid offending passing VIPs. So many of the bronze private bits were stolen, that the current member has been welded to the Angel's body. As you can imagine, the gift shop was loaded with all sorts of "The Angel of the City" souvenirs.

Our favorite piece at the museum, an untitled work by Anish Kapoor. At first, you gaze into the double concave circles of polished marble and see your reflection upside down.

But if you position yourself properly in front of it, a 3-D upright image pops out. 

Self-portrait

I was really hoping there would be a small reproduction of this in the gift shop, but alas, there was not. Maybe it's a good thing. I felt like Harry Potter in front of the Mirror of Erised. I didn't want to leave, it was so fascinating.

Another lion sculpture

At the end of our visit, a very tired Emilie looked like another work of art.

Venice Trip: Strolling through town

We passed underneath Saint Mark's Clocktower and did some windowing shopping

This store was very crowded

Pretty view

Carnival masks for sale were everywhere

Becca and a friend

Becca is learning the not-so-subtle art of the photobomb.

We didn't bring a stroller for Becca because we had read about what a pain they end up being with all the bridges you need to cross over.

Hmmm, I wonder if the powers that be at this church heard about what happened to the basilica's belltower in 1902.

View of the grand canal

For those of you who have seen the creepy Donald Sutherland thriller Don't Look Now (based on a short story by Daphne DuMaurier, who also wrote Rebecca), we kept our eyes peeled for any little girls in red raincoats as we walked through town.

Amazing street musician who performed Mozart and Bach for us.

We were slowly but surely making our way to a museum. Away from the main tourist squares, the lanes were quiet. And quiet as in with no cars, it's really, really quiet. Venice is Europe's largest urban car free area.

Typical Venetian street

Venice Trip: Lunch

Take-out sandwiches beside Saint Mark's Basilica

Piazza San Marco is famous for its pigeons, but there weren't that many while we were there.

Pigeon public bath

On the side of the basilica


Posing with a lion

Venice Trip: Piazza San Marco

We made our way through the dense crowd to "The drawing room of Europe"  Piazza San Marco.  As we walked through the square, I didn't know which way to look, what to take a picture of.  There was so much.  Huge structures, small but amazing details and a large, bustling crowd that made taking photos difficult.

Entering the piazza from the lagoon side, you first pass between two pillars topped by statues of the patrons of Venice: a winged lion (the symbol of Saint Mark) and Saint Theodore of Amasea. This first little square is called the Piazzetta. The Doge's Palace (home of the elected leader of a "crowned republic") to the right is a gothic palace built in the early 14th century. It serves today as a museum.

Detail of the palace's balcony

St Mark's Campanile in the main part of the square is the bell tower of St Mark's Basilica. It is one of the most recognizable symbols of the city. The tower was fiddled with over time, but reached its present form in 1514. One July morning in 1902, the brick campanile collapsed completely without warning and it seems to be a miracle that no one was killed. The tower was re-built exactly as it was.

The side of  Saint Mark's Basilica, located across the piazza from the belltower.  The basic structure of the church dates from 1063.  The basilica is one of the best known examples of Byzantine architecture.  The church is knows as the "Church of Gold" for its opulent design, gilded Byzantine mosaics, and status as a symbol of Venetian wealth and power, from the 11th century on.

Closeup of the side of the basilica. Click on the photo to see some of the gold mosaic work.

Details on the front of the basilica. Do you see the four bronze horses? The originals date from the first century AD and are thought to have been part of an arch dedicated to the Emperor Trajan. The horses were displayed in Constantinople until 1204 when the Doge sent them back to Venice as part of the loot sacked from Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. The horses were installed on the basilica in about 1254. They were then brought to Paris by Napoleon in 1797 but returned to Venice in 1815. Since the 1990s they have been kept in St Mark’s Museum (inside the basilica) and the horses now on the façade of the church are bronze replicas.

Unfortunately, there was a great deal of scaffolding on the front the basilica that made it difficult to visualize what the front façade should look like. Once again, other people's travel photos on the internet comes through for me.

A winged lion watching us from the top of the basilica. James had informed us before we arrived in Venice that the winged lion was the symbol of Venice and I had read somewhere that tourists like to count how many such lions they see around the city. I thought I might take as many pictures as I could of them. But why a winged lion?

In the ninth century, a few representatives from Venice stole the remains of St. Mark the Apostle from his tomb in Alexandria, Egypt. During their return voyage across the Mediterranean, a great storm arose. Saint Mark then appeared to the captain and warned him to raise all his sails immediately or else the ship would be wrecked upon hidden rocks. The grave robbers owed their safety to this miracle and after reaching Venice and handing over their cargo over to the Doge, the local authorities quickly elected St. Mark as Venice's patron saint. The apostle's traditional symbol--a winged lion--became the logo of the Venetian Republic. The symbol comes from St. Mark's description of John the Baptist's voice "crying out in the wilderness" upon hearing the Word of God. His voice is said to have sounded like that of a roaring lion. The winged lion is often seen holding the Holy Book.

Another winged lion on an archway to the side of the basilica.

We joined the long, long line that snaked around the basilica and along the side of the Doge's Palace to see the inside of the basilica. David pointed several sets of pillars on the side of the church, each with four differently colored marble.  All throughout the church, there are such pillars, showing off the wealth of Venice by importing marble from all over the world.

Looking back at the lagoon from our thankfully swiftly moving line into the basilica.  No photography was allowed inside the awe-inspiring church, but as we walked through, there were plenty of people disregarding the ban.  We were scandalized by their disregard of the rules (and in a church!), but I was just itching to pull my camera out of my pocket, but didn't.  Entry into the church was free, but you had to pay a couple of Euros to see the "extras" such as a closeup of the altar, the view of Venice from the balcony, saints relics, the museum, etc.  All those Euros add up when you have four kids, so we just walked through the main part of the basilica, marveling at all the gold.

Ah, my favorite building in Venice! Adjacent to the basilica is St Mark's Clocktower which houses the most important clock in the city, St Mark's Clock. It was constructed between 1496 and 1499 as a display of Venice's wealth, and as an aid to sailors on the Grand Canal about to depart on a voyage.

At the bottom of the tower is a two-story gateway that leads you to a lane with very, very expensive shops.

Above the gateway is the clock. The clock mechanism, dating from 1499, drives the main clock face, which consists of several concentric dials. The outermost displays the number 1 to 24 in Roman numerals, and a hand embellished with a depiction of the sun indicates the hour. The second dial depicts the twelve signs of the zodiac, picked out, like the inner dials, in gilt on an enamel blue background. The inner dials indicate the phases of the moon and sun.  This elaborate timepiece is in full working order.  Hmmm, I wonder if I can find a replica of this clock on-line.

The mechanism also moves a display above the clockface, where a niche with a depiction of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus lies between two displays: the hour in Roman numerals and the minutes (in multiples of five) in Arabic numerals. On Ascension Day, statues of the three kings pass in front of the displays.

Yes, that's the Lion of St Mark against the night sky. This clocktower lion was my favorite lion in all of Venice: the perfect mixture of power and patience as he gazed down at us.

Two blackened bronze figures intended as giants but known as the "Moors" stand on top and ring a bell on the hour, which we got to see, being in the right place at the right time by chance.

Venice Trip: A little history, gondolas and a few sighs

We researched a bit about Venice, as the kids were bound to ask many questions. Firstly, the city of Venice is actually spread out across 117 small islands in the marshy Venetian Lagoon. The independent country, the Republic of Venice, of which Venice was the capital, was a major maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades, as well as a very important center of commerce and art in the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century. Venice's status began to decline in the 15th century, when it engaged in battle with the Turks, then was lost behind in the race across the Atlantic for colonies and also by a series of plagues. In 1630, the plague killed a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens.

The buildings of Venice are constructed on closely spaced wood piles, which were imported from the mainland. (Under water, in the absence of oxygen, wood does not decay, rather it petrifies and becomes a stone-like structure.) During the 20th century, when many artesian wells were sunk into the periphery of the lagoon to draw water for local industry, Venice began to sink. This sinking process has slowed markedly (some say it has stopped completely) since artesian wells were banned in the 1960s. However, the city is still threatened by more frequent low-level floods, regularly following certain tides. In many old houses the former staircases used by people to unload goods are now flooded, rendering the former ground floor uninhabitable.

We first walked along the shore and gondolas were everywhere. Gondolas are traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat -- gondoliers never stick a pole into the bottom of the lagoon to propel the boat forward -- the water of Venice are too deep. For centuries gondolas were once the chief means of transportation within Venice. Today, the iconic boats still have a role in public transport in the city, serving as traghetti (ferries) over the Grand Canal. They are also used in special regattas (rowing races) held amongst gondoliers. Their primary role, however, is to carry tourists on rides at established prices. If you pay a little extra, you can have musical accompaniment. We saw some tourists having gondola rides with a guitarist and others with an accordion player and singer.



Until the early 20th century, gondolas had a small cabin, to protect the passengers from the weather or from onlookers. Its windows could be closed with louvered shutters -- the original "venetian blinds." The cabins were disbanded, possibly in response to tourists complaining that it blocked the view. There was once a law requiring that all gondolas be painted black, and that custom continues today.

The famous Bridge of Sighs. *Sigh* This was not how we were hoping to see it, looking like a ride from Disneyland. This is how we were hoping to see it:

Built in 1602, the white limestone bridge passes over the Rio di Palazzo and connects the old prisons to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace. The view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment. The bridge name, given by Lord Byron in the 19th century, comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice out the window before being taken down to their cells. In reality, the days of inquisitions and summary executions were over by the time the bridge was built, and the cells under the palace roof were occupied mostly by small-time criminals.