Grand Canal Ripples With History, Romance

V E N I C E, Italy, Oct. 28, 2003 -- Some travel truths are self-evident. As theGreat Wall of China is great indeed, so Venice's Grand Canal isgrand beyond compare.

For 2½ miles, this watery Champs-Elysees winds downa fantastic architectural canyon lined with rococo palaces andMoorish mansions, past splendid baroque and Gothic churches adornedwith the frescos and paintings of the greatest artists of theRenaissance, and here and there the everyday shops, markets andbanks of this still very vibrant maritime metropolis.

The vaporetto, the colorful, inexpensive but crowded water bus,is Venice's rapid transit system. From its decks one can drink incenturies of glorious history, when Venice ruled the world ofcommerce, and still rub shoulders with a stockbroker bent over hismorning newspaper while commuting to the business district near theRialto bridge. This is Venice's waterlogged Wall Street whereShakespeare's Shylock asked:

"What news on the Rialto?" The question is still used to mean,how is the market doing?

Shaped like a backwards "S," a medieval sign of wonder andmystery, the Grand Canal down the ages has witnessed plenty ofboth.

A Storied Past

Lord Byron swam the length of the canal after a liquid night onthe town. One of his spurned mistresses threw herself into it. Thehusband of George Eliot, the British novelist (alias Mary AnnEvans), fell into it from a hotel window.

The legendary Venetian lover Giacomo Casanova courted contessasand courtesans in his private love boat before winding up in "TheLeads," the attic prison in the Doge's Palace, from where hedramatically escaped through a hole in the roof.

Alighting from a lurching gondola, New Yorker magazine humoristRobert Benchley wired home to the wits at the Algonquin RoundTable: "Streets Full of Water… Please Advise."

Richard Wagner, at his grand piano in the Palazzo Vendramin, nowVenice's winter casino, heard the warning cry of gondoliers makinga quick turn and was inspired to compose the shepherd's pipe songin his opera Tristan.

Gilbert and Sullivan in The Gondoliers made merry lightopera music with these ballad-belting boatmen, but Mark Twaincouldn't abide "their constant caterwauling." Yet the formerMississippi River pilot on a busman's holiday down the Grand Canaldescribed the gondola as "free and graceful as a serpent in itsgliding" and the "gentlest, pleasantest locomotion we have everknown."

The straw-hatted troubadours rowing Venice's venerable and mostpricey transportation used to warble a full repertoire ofNeapolitan love songs. Now they are more inclined to post-Presleyrock, Broadway show tunes — Man From La Mancha resonates nicelyoff the wooden Accademia bridge — and have been known to substitute"O Danny Boy" for "O Sole Mio" when Irish and Americanpassengers recline on their Turkish bordello-style upholstery. Butbe forewarned: A ride in a gondola will cost a lot more than avaporetto — $75 for 50 minutes, compared to just a few dollars aticket.

Tied up to colorfully striped barber poles along the canal, thelocally built, highly lacquered, black gondolas, with their highsteel prows suggesting a seahorse, prance and rear on the tide likea corral of wild stallions.

Muse of Writers and Poets

Fruit and vegetable boats ply their trade near Ca' Rezzonico,the palazzo where Robert Browning polished poetic gems like thelines engraved in a plaque on the moss-draped wall:

"Open my heart and you will see, "Graven inside of it, Italy." Ca' is Venetian dialect for casa or house. "This best of all noble waterways," as Henry James wrote ofthe Grand Canal, "begins in glory" at the magnificent octagonalchurch of Santa Maria della Salute and "ends in abasement at therailway station," an eyesore exceeded in ugliness only by thenearby parking garage.

To view the canal in full, one might best hop a vaporetto at theSan Marco dock, after viewing the dazzling Byzantine basilica ofSt. Mark's, sparkling with the spoils of war: emeralds, rubies,solid gold mosaics, rare African marbles and alabasters plunderedfrom Constantinople after it was sacked in 1204 on the orders ofEnrico Dondalo, the blind Venetian doge, or magistrate, then in his90s.

Or wander down the fondamenta, the embankment, a few hundredyards to the next vaporetto station and pause for a quick snack atHarry's Bar. Here Orson Welles and Truman Capote sipped cappuccinosand Ernest Hemingway trained the bartenders in the subtleties ofthe extra dry martini.

Backpackers Offer Cost-Saving Advice

Vaporetti down the Grand Canal seem to be patronized at allhours by knowledgeable, back-packing college students from almostanywhere, eager to point out to you the house where Henry Jameslabored over The Aspen Papers or Thomas Mann wrote Death InVenice or Marcel Proust argued with his dear mother for 17 pagesin The Sweet Cheat Gone.

They can advise you which floating bus stop to debark at tovisit the churches, monasteries and friaries harboring the most orthe best of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Tiepolo, Carpaccio,Giotto, Bellini, Canaletto, almost the entire catalog of Italianart. They can also tell you which ones are free and don't charge acouple of euros to dip a finger in the holy water. Still, thisdonation for upkeep is a bargain compared with museum priceseverywhere these days, and one of the glories of Venice is to viewart in the very setting where the artist was commissioned to paintit.

The Grand Canal is 76 yards at its widest and 13 feet at itsdeepest stretch, near the Rialto bridge. It is never less than 40yards wide and maintains an average depth of 9 feet.

On each bank loom grand palaces with pink- and gold-tinted facades that arevariously ornate with tall, arched windows, Gothic and Moorishcornices and columns. Many are green-stained from the lappingwaters, and sadly blotched and bruised by time, the wind andweather.

As the vaparetto zigzags its way, one notices here and there alovely garden, an odorous fish market, a copper-domed churchflanked by a Romanesque bell tower, a cozy pensione with laundryfluttering from window poles, then two enormous but breathtakinglybeautiful buildings built as warehouses for German merchants andTurkish imports that have since been converted, respectively, intothe main post office and a natural history museum.

Life and Death Pass Down Grand Canal

Round the bend from the Rialto landing, one gazes in awe at the15th Century Ca' d'Oro, its facade a delicate filigree of Gothicmarble columns supporting balconies topped by exotic orientalarches. Many consider this the crown jewel in the canal'sextravagant necklace of architectural gems.

On any given day, life and death pass down the Grand Canal:religious processions, carnival pageants, men and ladies gondolaregattas, dinner boats and party boats twinkling with Japaneselanterns, sleek launches zooming celebrities and politicians toposh hotels, merchant barges loaded with TV sets, Pepsi-Cola andnew carpeting for a refurbished palazzo; garbage scows towing acloud of screaming gulls and fishing boats with furled netsbringing mussels, cuttlefish and delicious tiny clams from theAdriatic to dockside restaurants.

The same tide can carry a gala gondola wedding barge with apulsating rock band or a funeral cortege bound for the graveyardisle of San Michele, the death boat draped in black and gold,heaped with flowers and followed by a slow-rowing gondola entourageof mourners, clutching black hats or veils against the wind off thelagoon.

Venice is laced together by some 450 bridges, but only threecross the canal: first the simple arched Ponte dell 'Accademialeading to the Accademia Gallery, that magnificent temple ofVenetian art; next the Rialto, crowded with tiny shops and stallsand, at the end of the final reach, the heavily traversed Scalzibridge near the railroad terminal. Like John Singer Sargent, ClaudeMonet, James McNeil Whistler and Winston Churchill, artists stillset up their easels on or near these spans, while visitors armedwith camcorders and digital cameras seem to favor the only trafficlight along the canal, hanging where a smaller canal intersects. In price or priceless wonders to behold, no sightseeing busanywhere can match the vaporetto.

If You Go… VAPORETTO (water buses): Tickets cost about $6 per trip butthere are 24-hour, three-day and weekly tickets that are cheaperper ride. TRAGHETTO (public ferries): For a cheap, short ride across thecanal (rather than going the length of it), try the traghetto,which embark from a half-dozen points between the railroad stationand the Campo del Traghetto near St. Mark's Square. Tickets areabout 50 cents. WATER TAXIS: A short trip on the canal by water taxi can cost$80 to $100, plus extra charges for luggage, traveling after dark,Sunday travel, and more than four passengers. Official water taxishave a black registration number on a yellow background, and can behired at Piazzale Roma, Rialto, San Marco and the Lido.

GONDOLAS: Gondolas depart from St. Mark's Square, the Rialto,Piazzale Roma and the railway station. Fares are set by a centralagency at about $75 for 50 minutes. This is a minimum fee;gondoliers may demand more, but you can bargain for a shorter ridefor less money. To avoid haggling, book a ride in advance throughlocal tour operators. Each vessel carries up to six passengers, soyou can also save money by sharing the ride. Whatever you do, setthe fee before you set sail. GENERAL INFORMATION: Venice tourism, www.venice-tourism.com or the Italian Government Tourist Board, (212) 245-5618.