I wanted to be at the Doge's Palace before it opened so we could beat the crowds. I pretty much did, all except for 200 Japanese tourists who got in before it opened!
The Doge was the Governor of Venice, elected for life by the most powerful nobles of the most aristocratic families. Starting in Medieval times, it's considered kind of a step along the way to democracy.
His palace is made of pink and white marble in Venetian Gothic style around a large inner courtyard. It included the meeting chambers of the Senate, the courtrooms, ornate waiting rooms, and living quarters for his family. It was meant to show the power of the Doge and that Venice was truly "Queen of the Seas" at the peak of it's power in the 15th century.
There's the Golden Stairway, which has all the ceiling done in 24 carat gold. The rooms are all quite large with high, ornate ceilings. Walls are decorated with huge paintings, lots of them by Tintoretto. The largest in the world covers one huge wall with 500 figures, all individually painted, and Christ in the center dispensing Judgement and favoring the Doge. Kind of puts the Doge right up there, just under Christ. At least that was the message!
Larry and Dick and I went next to St. Mark's Cathedral, but the line had hundreds of people waiting, so first we had to check a bag. We really didn't need to, but I found out that if you check your bag, the claim check will let you go to the head of the line! It seems no one knows about this, because the bag check is down an alley and only a few people were there, but it worked like a charm! the guy just waved us in!
San Marco is really Byzantine looking, with lots of round domes and round arches and thousands of square feet of wall mosaics. The ceiling is all done in little gold mosaic tiles; which is a thin piece of gold leaf sandwiched between 2 pieces of glass. We went behind the altarpiece to see the treasure looted by Venetian Christians from Constantinople Christians. There were hundreds of jewels set into the gold, set off by small enamels. We got up on top of the roof to look out over the square and saw the 4 bronze horses. They were made in Alexandria (Egypt,) stolen first to Constantinople, (I think) then to Venice, then by Napoleon to Paris, and back to Venice when napoleon fell. Eventually the lights came slowly on, and the whole place began to glow with shining gold! Very cool.
In the afternoon we took a boat ride to the outlying island of Murano so see hand blown glass. I saw a chandelier that looked like Austrian crystal, and I asked about it. Oh, no! The Austrians copied the technique from Murano! Murano has been doing glass for a thousand years.
We took a couple of more boats to Burano, which specializes in hand-made lace. The men fish and the women make lace and they've done that for hundreds of years. the best thing about Burano is all the houses are painted in bright colors. Larry really liked it, and we had dinner outside under an orange umbrella.
No comments:
Post a Comment