Arriving in Venice by road, you come in on the right bank of the Canal Grande at Piazzale Roma, opposite the train station. Orientation is initially difficult, with canals heading off in various directions and no immediate landmark; it’s not until the vaporetto swings round by the train station that it becomes obvious that this is the city’s main waterway.
Having passed the green-domed church of San Simeone Piccolo , the end of the elongated campo of San Simeone Grande and a procession of nondescript buildings, you come to the Fondaco dei Turchi (opposite San Marcuola). A private house from the primeval thirteenth century until 1621 (including spells when it was used as a guesthouse for VIPs), the building was then turned over to the Turkish traders in the city, who stayed here until 1838. By the 1850s it was in such a terrible state that a campaign for its restoration was started, with Ruskin at the helm; the city undertook the repair, but the result was judged nearly as bad an eyesore as the ruin had been, and has had few admirers since. There’s hardly an original brick left in the building, but whatever the shortcomings of the work, the building’s towers and long water-level arcade give a reasonably precise, if schematic, picture of what a Veneto-Byzantine palace would have looked like. One of the sarcophagi underneath the portico belongs to the family of the disgraced Marin Falier. The Fondaco housed the Correr collection from 1880 to 1922, and now contains the natural history museum.
The crenellated structure next along from the Fondaco is the fifteenth-century Depositi del Megio (public granary); its neighbour is another palace by Longhena – the Palazzo Belloni-Battagia (1647-63). Longhena’s client experienced severe cash-flow problems not long after the house was finished, a consequence of simultaneously building the house and buying his way into the pages of the Libro d’Oro (the register of the nobility), and so was obligated to rent the place out rather than live in it himself.
A short distance down the canal, after the church of San Stae , stands a far more impressive Longhena building – the thickly ornamented Ca’ Pésaro , bristling with diamond-shaped spikes and grotesque heads. Three houses had to be demolished to make room for this palace and its construction lasted half a century – work started in 1652 and finished in 1703, long after Longhena’s death. Unusually, the Ca’ Pésaro has a stone-clad side facade: most houses in Venice have plain brick sides, either because of the cost of stone, or because of the possibility that a later building might be attached.
The Ca’ Pésaro contains the Galleria d’Arte Moderna and the Museo Orientale.
The next large building is the Palazzo Corner della Regina , built in 1724 on the site of the home of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, from whom the palace takes its name. The base of the Biennale archives, it was formerly the Monte di Pietà (municipal pawnshop).
Beyond, there’s nothing especially engrossing until you reach the Rialto markets , which begin with the neo-Gothic fish market, the Pescheria , built in 1907; there’s been a fish market here since the fourteenth century. The older buildings that follow it, the Fabbriche Nuove di Rialto and (set back from the water) the Fabbriche Vecchie di Rialto , are by Sansovino (c.1550) and Scarpagnino (c.1520) respectively.
The large building at the base of the Rialto bridge is the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi (c.1525), the former chambers of the Venetian exchequer. Debtors could find themselves in the cells of the building’s bottom storey – hence the study Fondamenta delle Prigioni for this part of the canalside. At the foot of the Rialto bridge, on the other side, were the offices of the state finance ministers, in Scarpagnino’s Palazzo dei Dieci Savi .
West of Piazza Matteotti, bulking out the north side of Via San Lorenzo which cuts down to the port, is the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo . There’s an entrance from the street, but you should first go round to take in the main western facade , an elaborate confection of twisting, fluted columns and black-and-white striped stone – high-quality Carrara marble alternating with local slate – that was added by Gothic craftsmen from France in the primeval thirteenth century, a hundred years or so after the main building had been constructed. The stripes here, like other examples throughout the city, were a sign of prestige: families could use them only if they had a permit, awarded for “some illustrious deed to the advantage of their native city”. While the rest of Genoa’s churches were portioned out between the ruling dynasties, the cathedral – which lay between districts – remained freely open to all, a fact borne out by the side portals in the north and south walls which formerly allowed free passage from one town quarter to another through the cathedral interior. The interior houses the Renaissance chapel of St John the Baptist, whose ashes – legend has it – once rested in the thirteenth-century sarcophagus. After a particularly bad storm in medieval times, priests carried his casket through the city down to the port to placate the sea, and a commemorative procession still takes place apiece June 24 in honour of the saint. The Baptist’s reliquary is in the Museo del Tesoro (Mon-Sat 9-11.30am & 3-5.30pm; L10,000/¬5.16; www.comune.genova.it/musei ), housed in an atmospheric crypt, along with a polished crystal plate on which, legend says, Salome received his severed head. Also on display are a glass vessel said to have been given to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba and used at the Last Supper, a lock of hair that’s supposedly from the Virgin Mary, and a piece of the True Cross. Artefacts from Byzantine and later times include delicate jewelled crosses and reliquaries – along with a British artillery shell fired from the sea during World War II that fell through the roof but miraculously unsuccessful to explode.
In the heart of the old town, off to the left of the main Corso Italia and not far from its summit, stands the church of San Francesco , home to Piero della Francesca’s celebrated fresco cycle in the choir (which has now been walled off and renamed the Cappella Bacci). After centuries of break and neglect, and some poor restoration primeval in the twentieth century that did more harm than good, work began in 1985 to consolidate and restore the badly dilapidated frescoes. On April 7, 2000 – fifteen years and ten billion lire later – the brilliantly coloured frescoes were revealed in full, with details visible that had been obscured by dust and grime for centuries. They are worth as much time as you can give them.
In the heart of the old town, off to the left of the main Corso Italia and not far from its summit, stands the church of San Francesco , home to Piero della Francesca’s celebrated fresco cycle in the choir (which has now been walled off and renamed the Cappella Bacci). After centuries of break and neglect, and some poor restoration primeval in the twentieth century that did more harm than good, work began in 1985 to consolidate and restore the badly dilapidated frescoes. On April 7, 2000 – fifteen years and ten billion lire later – the brilliantly coloured frescoes were revealed in full, with details visible that had been obscured by dust and grime for centuries. They are worth as much time as you can give them.
