Venice!

We had already intended to go to Venice to see a special bridge, but while planning, we found that we could also take in a special art extravaganza - the Venice Biennale.  We splashed out (appropriately) and rented a small apartment right on the Grand Canal - amazing!

The bridge is a temporary structure put across the Grand Canal for a week every November.  It commemorates the building of the church of Santa Maria della Salute  in 1630, in gratitude for the ending of a great plague which had carried off a third of the citizens of Venice.  The bridge is used by processions of residents who visit the church to give thanks.

The Biennale is a huge affair, and it was only possible for us to get a flavour of it.  To put it mildly, it must be daunting for artists to display their work in the setting of the most beautiful city on the planet!  Many of the pavilions were in the Arsenale - the old shipbuilding yards of the thousand-year Venetian republic.  Once the largest in Europe, they introduced mass production techniques hundreds of years before Henry Ford.  Dante was so impressed during his visit in 1321 that he gave the Venice Arsenale a few lines in the Inferno.

First view of the Grand Canal

We passed many views like this on the way to our apartment

About to dive into the dark "Sotoportego" to access our flat

Barbara with Grand Canal at dusk

Next morning, from the vaporetto - a Damien Hirst greets us on the way to the Arsenale

The temporary Bridge to the Church of the Salute

on the way to the Arsenale

The impressive walls of the ancient shipyard

White Swans in the Czech pavilion - you don't have to understand it to enjoy it!