Eat, Gay, Love: Visiting Dead Icons in Venice
It’s early morning and I’ve arrived at the airport in good time, which is just as well because the departures queue winds around the whole terminal like a snake. After forty five minutes of waiting, I’m at the barrier and my boarding pass won’t work, so I frantically find a member of staff. They laugh and tell me I’m at the wrong terminal. Fuck. I dash across Gatwick back to the South Terminal, where the departures queue is considerably shorter and I make it through security flustered, but not late. There’s not enough time for me to enjoy a glass of holiday Prosecco at the bar, or to find a good glossy magazine for the flight, only to pick up some sweets and a snack for when I land. The flight to Venice Marco Polo is being called so I head to the gate where every passenger is being checked for the specific face mask model required to enter Italy. Those with the wrong ones are sent back to the WHSmith to buy FFP2s.
Luckily, I was prepared for this, so I am waved into the lounge where I can finally relax and wait to board the plane.I booked a window seat near the back so that I could see our journey over the Alps and descent into Venice itself without the view being obscured by an obnoxiously orange EasyJet logo wing. I’ve only brought a small carry on bag which I put under the chair in front of me, with my book, hat and sweets in my lap. I read once that economy seating on aeroplanes is only a few inches wider than the space allotted to captives on prison ships. I appreciate that I at least have an arm rest. I’ve brought two books with me. The first is The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell, a radical utopian queer text that gives me great epigrams like “The faggots move towards the limits of living in the body for they have known body ecstasy and want to live there with everyone always.” My second book is The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell, a glamorous and historical account of Palazzo Vernier dei Leoni and the three mysterious women who owned it for different periods during the twentieth century. I will be visiting the palazzo later this evening. I order a vodka and Diet Coke seeing as I missed my morning’s Buck’s Fizz at the airport. It is only just 10am.
I disembark quickly with only my hat and shoulder bag to carry, no cases to wait for. I know where the machine is that I need to buy my airport boat ticket, and I also get a three day vaporetto pass, the water bus transport system used to get around the city. I walk briskly through air conditioned corridors to the pier where the AliLaguna boats take people to the islands. I remember that years ago this used to be a hot, uncomfortable, rough foot path through ditches and car parks in the hot sun and am thankful for the extended building of Marco Polo airport. I wait in line for the boat. The line gets busy very quickly and takes a long time. A man a few rows behind me tries to argue with the attendant, both speaking broken English. I don’t think it’s sensible to argue with these people, what if they just decide not to let you on the boat? What then? You’re the one stranded at an airport, they are just at their workplace and can go home when they finish their shift.The boat ride takes forever, I am filled with anticipation in a not unpleasant way. I’m also ravenous and remember the crisps I cleverly bought for this very extended entry to the city. The boat travels through the islands of Burano and Murano first, then a glimpse of the back of Venice, the Fondamente Nuovo and San Michele, the island cemetery where Sergei Diaghilev, the Russian ballet impresario, and other famous people are buried.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
I visited Diaghilev’s grave once, a marble tomb that ballet dancers from around the world made pilgrimage to and leave their pointe shoes on top as an offering. The boat carries on round the eastern side of the city and across the lagoon to the Lido, where all the grand hotels with private beaches are. Then it’s back across like a shuttlecock and finally we can see the famous skylines of Venice, the Basilica, the Campanile tower, the Palazzo del Doge, and finally I feel at home. I take pictures on my phone out of the little window, the familiar vaporetto stops streaking past; St Elena, Giardini, Arsenale, San Zaccaria. I stay on the boat after the famous San Marco stop where almost everyone else gets off at, because I am going straight to the hostel to check in and drop off my bag, which is in Giudecca, the island next to the city. I haven’t been there before so am slightly wary. I.m the last person on the boat and I think the staff have forgotten me and my request to stop at Zitelle, because they sail straight past it. Instead I get off at Stucky, the other end of the island and have to walk back to Zitelle. It only takes twenty minutes and I get to see the famous Fortuny factory/warehouse. It doesn’t look very busy right now.
I arrive at the hostel, an old building which I think has been a Venetian hostel for decades, but is currently being run by the snazzy European company Generator. The decor inside is very “punchy” and “hip”. I check in easily and am given my room key. I have a bunk in a mixed dormitory which is something I’ve never experienced before so I am somewhat trepidatious. I find the room and it is instantly overwhelming. It’s quite dark, despite it being the middle of the day, full of bunk beds and has the aroma of sleeping bodies. Some people must be taking siesta. I stumble through the beds til I find my own, thankfully it’s a bottom bunk facing the window, hopefully I wont have to make small talk (or eye contact) with anyone when I prepare for bed or get dressed in the morning. I put my bag and jacket in the locker under the bunk. Luckily, I’ve brought a padlock with me, my shoulder bag having previously been my gym bag. I swap my essentials into a smaller tote bag and quickly exit.
I leave the hostel immediately and head for a boat to San Marco. I feel a bit apprehensive about returning to that hot room tonight but I decide that it’s not worth fretting over now, I’ll deal with it when it’s time. I put it behind me and turn hungrily towards the city.I get off at San Zaccaria and immediately stop at a stall for tourist tat and pick a black lace fan and a pair of round sunglasses, having left mine back in Brighton. The salesman tries to charge 38 euros which even by Venetian standards is bold. I tell him I only have a twenty. He considers me and then nods. I feel extremely competent, which is not something I’m too familiar with. I cross bridges towards San Marco, pausing at the Bridge of Sighs, the prisoner’s passage from the royal palace to the prisons, to take a picture with my phone. I notice that the crowds are considerably smaller than the ones I remember, I am able to move around with a lot more freedom, no more fighting to get to a good vantage point. It must be that this is still early in the season, late May, as opposed to the mid August period I’m used to.
St Mark’s square is as warm and welcoming as it ever has been, with its edges full of tables covered in white linen, smartly uniformed waiters inviting you to sit down and have a very expensive cocktail. The air is filled with excited voices and sporadic bursts of music from the several different string quartets and white-jacketed pianists placed deliberately far enough away from each other so the sound is never truly discordant. The grand façade of St Mark’s Basilica is being restored and so is partially covered with scaffolding. The ruby lions near the back of the square are close to the building work, only one of them available for tourists to pose with and children to sit upon. I plunge into the back streets and walk quickly through the crowds. I’ve made a rough plan to go find something to eat and then head back to Palazzo Vernier dei Leoni, now home to the Peggy Guggenheim collection, and get a good amount of time there before it closes at 6pm.I head through the streets in search of a particular pizza slice bar I remember being one of my favourites the last time I was here. Then, I was with my now ex-boyfriend, and we bought deliciously huge slices of fresh pizza and ate them sitting on a closed fountain in a small shady square.
When I was a child, the same bar had been part of a larger fast-food style pizza restaurant where you could buy slices for 2000 lira (around £1) and small bottles of wine that you could sit and drink looking out of a giant window at the crowds surging past. I come to the square quicker than I thought I would, journeys that felt endless when I was younger now seem laughably quick and easy. The bar I remember is still there, but its selection is minimal, this being the middle of the afternoon, way past lunch time. I turn the corner into the square where the restaurant used to be and its now a cocktail bar boasting happy hour Aperols for 3 euros. Opposite it is a pizza place more like what I was searching for, a restaurant called Farini. It’s light and airy, with bar style seating around floor to ceiling windows, shaded outdoor tables, good air conditioning and fresh pizza coming out of a huge oven. I buy two large slices because I’m starving, and an Aperol spritz. It’s all delicious. As I leave I take a picture of the shop front to remind myself that this was a good lunch place.I head back to San Marco with renewed energy and cut across the opposite end of the square to start out towards the Guggenheim gallery.
“I’ve never cared for Picasso that much, but seeing real Pollocks and Kandinskys feels exciting.”
This walk is picturesque, more so than the cramped back streets I took to get to Farini. Some streets are lined with huge designer shops, tempting in the excessively rich American tourists, startling window displays showing avant garde mannequins in truly incongruous winter-wear, making one sweat in the sun just looking at it. Some wind round sharp corners and suddenly elevate into tiny bridges over the turquoise canals where smiling gondoliers offer rides for extortionate prices. Soon, the streets open up even more and I am climbing the Accademia bridge, one of the two largest bridges in Venice, the only ones that cross the Grand Canal itself. The view from the top is beautiful, and I pause to find the terrace of the palazzo I am about to visit. When it was owned by the eccentric Marchesa Luisa Casati, she would throw elaborate costume parties that at midnight would disgorge its guests into lantern lit gondolas and parade down the Grand Canal, a tame leopard or two sitting nobly either side of the hostess. I continue on.
I arrive at the gallery and the staff initially seem reluctant to let me in. It is just gone 4:30pm and I suspect last entry is before 5. Still, they eventually let me buy my ticket and I happily cross into the sculpture garden, just ahead of a large student group. The palazzo was built (and never finished) in the eighteenth century and was bought by Peggy Guggenheim in the late 1940s, who then turned it into a gallery for her incredible American and European art collection, featuring twentieth century geniuses like Picasso, Max Ernst and Jackson Pollock. It also houses one of my parents favourite paintings, L’Empire Des Lumieres by Rene Magritte, a print of which has hung in our sitting room since before I could walk. As I grew older I was able to identify my own favourite pieces of the collection, a sculpture in the garden by Giacometti, a surreal painting by Leanor Fini that I think looks a bit like Jane Fonda in Barbarella, a strange and sinister Max Ernst painting depicting a monstrous bride being attended on by strange demons. I’ve never cared for Picasso that much, but seeing real Pollocks and Kandinskys feels exciting.
The delicate silver sculpture made for Peggy’s bed head by Alexander Calder is always charming. I walk through the rooms looking for old favourites, I know that the collection occasionally gets rotated into storage, or restoration, or loaned to other galleries, so I make mental notes of what is and isn’t here. Afterwards, with at least half an hour before closing, I head outside to the terrace.This is possibly my favourite spot in Venice, the cool marble bench on the terrace of the palazzo, facing the Grand Canal as it opens up to join the wide blue lagoon, boats bobbing around on its tiny waves. I can see the Accademia bridge from here, where I stood just over an hour earlier. This is also the place where I can feel most connected to the history of the palazzo. Inside has been rebuilt many times over, making it into a sleek, efficient gallery complete with a chic cafe and gift shop, which makes it hard to imagine it as the home it once was.
The incredibly singular Luisa Casati lived here periodically between 1910 and 1924, but very little of her remains. Casati was a living work of art, the most stylish woman to ever exist, whose entire history can be pieced together by the receipts filed by craftspeople, decorators, artists and couturiers. She was a muse to Gabriele d’Annunzio, patron to Augustus John, Boldini, Romaine Brooks, Man Ray, Poiret and countless others. At one time she was the most depicted woman in art, along with her menagerie of animals and costumes. She spent her vast generational wealth in ways that were anarchic, bankrupting herself over art, commissioning paintings, wax dolls, black marble rooms with gold fixtures, elaborate masks, the most striking wardrobe ever seen, ropes upon ropes of pearls worn round her neck that trailed on floor, crystal balls that had once belonged to famous Italian mediums, jewellery from displaced European royal dynasties.
She entertained some of the artists that I have admired most in this palazzo, Erte, Cecil Beaton, Jean Cocteau, Diaghilev and Nijinsky. Diaghilev. Sergei Diaghilev who now lies entombed on San Michele. Where does Luisa Casati lie? I know that she died penniless in London, foraging feathers out of bins to wear in her hair. Highgate Cemetery? Brompton? I take a piece of paper from my notebook and write Luisa Casati’s name and a magical glyph representing Resurrection, fold it very tightly and wedge it underneath a marble slab near the bench. Casati deserves to be remembered just as much as Peggy Guggenheim.
Words & Images: Misha MN
