The location of Rosa Salva's cafe makes an excellent outdoor perch for resting and ingesting many first-class calories in the form of pastry and ice cream.

One Sunday afternoon as I was toiling along toward the Fondamente Nove on my way to Burano, I stopped for refreshment (coffee and use of the bathroom) at the elegant cafe/bar Rosa Salva in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo.

Let me note right here that although travel writers seem to love propagating “Zanipolo,” the ancient Venetian name for this trusty duet of saints, I myself have never heard any Venetian use that word, even by mistake.  That era, whenever it was, is long, long gone.  (I have seen it written, occasionally, on local boats or bars.)   I just wanted to point that out.

Anyway, it was a miserable day.  When it rains like that the entire world goes sodden, nothing escapes.  Your skin isn’t just wet, it’s saturated.  The air, your clothes, your brain.  A day like this makes you want to just stay in bed, with the (sodden) covers pulled over your (sodden) head. 

Not surprisingly, there were no other customers in the cafe.  A dark-haired girl and a young man wearing glasses were standing behind the bar.  I smiled and gave that whaddya-gonna-do shrug toward the weather and the world. 

I said, “Why are we here?” 

They smiled.  He said, “Good question.  There’s nobody around — nobody.  And there’s five of us here to work today.  Some days even with five we’re working like crazy, but look at this.  There’s nothing to do.”

Helpful little Anglo-Saxon, no-minute-left-unexploited me, bounces right in: “You could read a book,” I offered.  “Write some letters.  Do needlepoint.  Write the story of your life.  Not the stuff that happened, but the stuff you wish had happened.  Your dreams.”

Did someone say dreams?  He was ready.  “My dream was to become a captain of a vaporetto with the ACTV [the local transport company],” he replied. 

“Good grief!” I said (or rather, its Venetian equivalent).   ”If you’re going to dream, dream big!  Captain of a vaporetto?  Why not make it captain of a cruise ship?  After all, it’s just dreams.  Go for it!” 

“Well, no,” he replied, unruffled.  “It would be enough for me.  It’s a secure position, you work your seven hours and then you go home.”  (This the classic philosophy of a certain sort of person here: I need to work but don’t let it disturb my life.)   “Besides, my father was captain of a cruise ship and he was gone for weeks at a time.”  Oops.  I was aiming at the wrong dream.

“Well, that changes things,” I said.  “You know what you’re talking about.  So fine.  Why don’t you apply to the ACTV?”

“I did.”  He gestured toward his glasses.  “You can’t make it if you wear glasses.”

I didn’t want to give in.  “So have the operation!”

“I could do that” — he had obviously been serious about this dream, small as it might have seemed to me.  “It would correct the near-sightedness, but not the astigmatism.”  (Or the other way around, I can’t remember.)

“I wouldn’t have minded being a train driver,” he went on, “but it’s the same problem about the eyes. ”

“Subway driver?”  (Somewhere else, obviously, not here.)   Nope — anyone who wants to work at something that’s part of the autotramvieri union, it’s the same story.  He was stuck.

He had sort of made his peace with it, but he was still young enough to feel the empty space where what he wanted to be his life was supposed to have been put.  Meanwhile he’s making do with carrying overpriced cappuccinos to exhausted tourists.  Or not, as is the case today.

“Well,” I said, still trying to be helpful but drastically changing tack, “just think, anyway you’ve still got your eyes.  How many people could say they wish they had your problems?”  Not the best contribution, being repulsively  banal, but  true, which is something, anyway.

He agreed.  Well, what else could he do?  Evidently he had long since reached that conclusion, the idea that things could have been, or be, worse.  But meanwhile the rain is pouring down, and the motor has pretty much stalled in his life, so to speak.  Whether he simply needs more fuel, or new spark plugs, or some part that’s more expensive and hard to find (”…we’ll have to order it…”…”it will be two months…” …”everybody’s closed for Christmas/New Year’s/summer vacation”…) I hope he finds it and gets his life moving again.  He’s too young to stay stalled in the breakdown lane of life like this.

This is just one of my random musings; they usually come when I’m doing hard labor, of which there is plenty every day.

It’s the old idea of imagining what certain historical personages would do or say if they found themselves thrown together at, say, some cocktail party in a trendy loft in the meatpacking district.  The kind of gathering where you realize you know absolutely no one but the host, who has long since disappeared in the scrum.

So I was washing the dishes when suddenly Copernicus came into my mind.  He seemed lonely.  I cast around for somebody who could keep him company till at least the next tray of canapes came past, and I thought, Baby June.  Already this party is looking up.

So I needed more.  George Burns is staring out the window — odd, I know, even I have trouble picturing him standing still — so I sent him Marie Curie.  There.  He’ll make her smile, which I think she probably hasn’t done since she fainted from hunger in her freezing little garret as a student in Paris.  And she’ll give him a leg up on something really important about the subatomic world, which you have to admit is a subject that has always been lacking in his shows. 

So we throw out a batch of models and a few publicists and screenwriters and street artists to make space for some more happy couples.  I think Nikola Tesla and Edith Wharton would be smokin’.   I know he would be pretty far out along the edge of the envelope for her, the edge of the flap that cuts your tongue, but I believe that she could talk with anybody.  That’s what real sophistication and real manners means and real intelligence means.  I have no doubt that by the end of the evening he’d be thinking how smart she was and a little less about his own scintillating brain.

Then I got to imagining Enrico Dandolo and Mary Anderson (you know, the woman who invented the windshield wiper).  He was one of the most pragmatic people ever born, and I think  he’d have liked her.  Or at least understood her.  I’m serious.  Because I don’t think many people understood him, either. 

Joan of Arc and George Clooney.

Ernest Hemingway and Marian Anderson.

Captain James Cook and Wilma Rudolph. 

Margaret Sanger and Hereward the Wake.

Vitale Bramani and St. Hilda of Whitby.

None of these really working for you?  Okay, how about this:

Martha Stewart and Stalin.  

Back to work.

When you walk out of the train station in Venice, the Grand Canal is the first thing you see.  Or ought to see.  I remember that day 25 years ago; it was a bolt from the blue from which I have never recovered. 

But the Grand Canal hasn’t been the first  thing you see for quite a while now.  Your eye goes straight to the imposing baroque church on the other side of the water, and you’ll be staring at it not because it’s a church, or baroque, or imposing.  It will be because of the imposing not-even-close-to-baroque billboard covering the facade.  I won’t describe it, I’ll just show it to you:

The idea of offering a sponsor a public space to promote its product in exchange for the money needed for restoration of art and architecture has become the greatest thing to hit Venice since the invention of the coffeehouse.  And it is absolutely true that the billboard preceding this one was much worse, as the lady promoting a line of handbags was even less clad.  This is the kind of hair-splitting you find yourself indulging in here, but ”It could always be worse” doesn’t get it done in a city that is an entire work of art.

Since the city never has any money to do anything it doesn’t feel like doing (though there are weekly miracles in which funds appear for all sorts of unexpectedly necessary things, like installing turnstiles on the vaporetto docks), for some time now it has been offering vast spaces for private cash on monuments.  I am not the only person who finds this ad objectionable (nor am I the only person who is wondering why this church has been condemned to Restoration Purgatory; it’s been under scaffolding since the first time I saw it, in 1985).  Plenty of people have objected. 

I also find it objectionable that half of the Doge’s Palace is covered with publicity for Chopard (it started last September, with ads for Lancia), and most of the Marciana Library is concealed by silliness by Swatch. By the way, there is a national law which requires that the scaffolding covering a public monument under restoration must show a perfect replica of the concealed facade.  A mere detail, obviously.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

And I mustn’t let myself stop now to talk about how the city had stamped all the waivers needed to allow a Maltese business to put five mothers-of-all-Jumbotrons in the Piazza San Marco, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in exchange for millions of euros to restore the buildings they would be defacing.  This plan seems to have been halted, at least for now.  One can never be sure if these shenanigans are really dead, or just in hibernation.

Don’t imagine that there are no rules for the safeguarding of Venice’s monuments.  There are metric tons of them.  But here is how the Doge’s Palace became, overnight, the most beautiful billboard in the world: 

The palace needed restoration; among other things, bits of marble were falling off it and barely missing passing tourists.  The work would cost 2 million euros, which the city doesn’t have.  So the Dottor Group, a massive company specializing in architectural and historic restoration, got the job and put up the money, and so they get to rent out the billboard space of the gods.  Then they installed the scaffolding (of course there are also laws limiting the square-footage allowed for publicity on public monuments, which these exceed) by driving iron hooks between the 500-year-old blocks of Istrian stone, hooks which will be there for at least three years.

Suddenly the legs-on-the-church don’t look quite so bad?  That’s how you begin to lose your bearings here.  But never mind your taste in legs, or churches.  There are so many other facets to the plight of San Simeon Piccolo that I can’t organize them for you; I’ll just give them as they come to me. 

• Nobody knows how much money is needed for the restoration
• Nobody can say how much money has been found so far for the restoration
• Nobody knows how many hours a day that SACAIM, the restoration company, is working at the site, or whether the contract is being honored
• SACAIM won’t make any statement on whether or not the work has been stopped because it hasn’t been paid all the money it’s due 
• Nobody knows what criteria are involved in deciding what is considered acceptable publicity
• The Curia (the church administration) has stated many times that seeking pelf through publicity is “squalid” (there goes most of Western civilization).  But this point is especially tricky because church buildings aren’t technically the responsibility of the Church in Italy anymore, but are wards of the state and depend on federal money which is allocated by an assortment of Superintendencies (for architecture, archaeology, “cultural goods,” and so on).
• The Municipal Police (as with the Superintendencies, there is a variety of forces of public order, with varying responsibilities) says that it has done its job as far as paperwork is concerned, the array of official permissions required for work on public buildings, or on public spaces.  So technically it has no authority to remove the poster.

The Superintendency of Architectonic Treasures has already stated (as with the handbag-lady poster) that the publicity has to come down.  The Curia is against it, but the Superintendency says that the Curia has the power of reviewing all publicity before it goes up.  But wait — in the controversy of the Jumbotrons, the Superintendent herself, Renata Codello, stated that every piece of publicity put up during restoration work is regularly approved or rejected by the Superintendency.  So who gave the permission for this poster to be put up in the first place?  Nobody knows.

So here we are:  Nobody decided to put it up, and now nobody can decide whether or how to get it down.  But this sudden flurry of discussion is making the Superintendent a little testy.

Yesterday Monsignor Antonio Meneguolo pushed his advantage a little too far by stating that this whole thing is “monstrous and immoral.”  Superintendent Codello shot back that even though she never gave permission for this poster (that ought to be an embarrassing thing for a superintendent to admit, but let’s keep going), the Curia hasn’t got much to be proud of either.  “We’re all for publicity,” she told the Gazzettino, “it’s the only way which allows us to be able to restore buildings.  If the Curia were to put up some money, we’d take the publicity down.” 

Furthermore,  ”It’s not as if we could have just left the church to fall to pieces, abandoned by the Curia.  The patriarchate has never put up a single euro.”  So there.

But what about how hideous it is?  She’s ready: “The churches of the city are full of examples of really bad interventions.”  Presumably not approved by the superintendent.  Though one doesn’t know why.

This bickering only shows that here in the Cradle of the Renaissance people still defend themselves by saying ”Yes, I did it, but he did worse.”  Which comes right after you say ”Well he started it.”

Let’s imagine that I understand most of what has been going on.  What I really don’t understand is why this horrible thing has become an issue right now.  It was out there for months and months and nobody said anything.  Now, all of a sudden, it’s a huge problem. 

In fact, the only thing that both the Superintendent and the Monsignor agree on is that they are shocked, shocked to find that there is a vulgar and immoral billboard on a church.

                           (I acknowledge the excellent reporting of Davide Scalzotto).

April 25 is the feast day of Venice’s patron saint, Mark.  (Not the official patron saint of tourists, though you might have thought so.  I haven’t been able to find one yet, though Gerasimos and Dymphna would be likely candidates, seeing that they’ve already been assigned to watch over the mentally infirm. Travelers — as opposed to tourists — have the choice of Nicholas, Joseph, St. Anthony of Padua (he of the lost-objects fame) and/or the Archangel Raphael.  There is a definite difference between travelers and tourists, and it’s more often the latter who have need of divine aid.  Those are just my thoughts.)  Still, having one of the four Evangelists to watch over you ought to cover just about any eventuality, and clearly the early Venetians thought so too. 

     Venice was never without a patron saint, but for the first several centuries of its existence that task was assigned to a Greek soldier saint, Theodore of Amasea (”Todaro,” in Venetian). 

The original of this statue is safely out of the rain in a sheltered corner of the courtyard of the Doge's Palace.

In that era Venice was still technically a colony of Byzantium, and a saint’s being Latin or Greek had as much political as religious significance.  By 828, though, Venice had begun to reach a level of importance, and independence, which convinced its rulers that they needed to upgrade their guardian.  A Latin saint now looked better than a Greek one, and why stop there?  They aimed for one of the four Evangelists, Saint Mark, whose body was known to repose in Alexandria, Egypt.

     And so they went and stole him.  Two intrepid sailors, known to history as “Buono” of Malamocco and “Rustico” from Torcello (unquestionably noms de guerre), spirited the body of the city’s erstwhile bishop out of the Muslim metropolis by hiding it on a wagon covered in pig carcasses (and also cabbage leaves, which was the Venetian way of conserving meat, between alternating layers of lard and cabbage.  The Bible compares humans to grass, but Venetians are more realistic).

     This exploit highlights two of the most fundamental Venetian traits: shrewdness and audacity.  And in case “Good” and “Rustic” appear to have been improbably daring and clever, some scholars have made a good case for their having bribed the shrine’s guardian.  The point here, as in much of Venetian history, is that it worked.  For my money, the appropriate motto for the Old Ones wouldn’t be the legendary “Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus” [Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist]  which is inscribed on the book most of his symbolic winged lions are holding, but a straightforward “Get it done.”

     In the great days, Venice observed not one, but four celebrations of its saint:

1. January 31, the “translation” (well, theft) of his remains, which was popularly called San Marco dei mezeni, because the body had been concealed between (in mezzo) the aforementioned pork and cabbage;
2. April 25, his martyrdom.  This is the big day for us, and it is called the festa del bocolo, or feast of the long-stemmed rose;
3. June 25, the finding of his relics (fancy word for corpse), which had inexplicably gone missing during or after the great fire in the basilica in 976.   Legend has it that a priest was led to the site of the concealed body by a powerful scent of roses, so not only did the liturgy involve a priest sprinkling the altar with rosewater, the day itself was referred to as San Marco dell’acqua rosata, or Saint Mark of the rosewater.  Roses again.  I have to look into that.
4. October 8, the dedication of the basilica, which had been built specifically to honor and preserve his body.  Ordinary people called this simply San Marco de le zizoe, the Venetian word for jujubes, a popular but transient little autumn fruit here which is like a date made of styrofoam.  I buy them at least once just so I can say the word: ZEE-zo-eh.  It makes me smile.  There is, in fact, more to say about them, but I’ll save that for another time.

All this wasn’t just because Mark deserved it.  Venice’s masters loved pomp not only for itself but because they knew how to exploit it.  They made a point of creating celebrations around an enormous number of events — saints’ days, deliverance from plagues (twice), military victories, even military defeats.  All that was necessary was that Venice had to have been the star.  It worked extremely well, because all of this festivizing kept civic pride bubbling away, ready for use at any moment.  You weren’t even to imagine that there could be anything better than being a Venetian, and ceremonial was a dependable way to keep that fact front and center in your average Venetian’s brain.

     Back to the body.  There is a body under the high altar, and it is labeled as being Mark’s.  Lino doesn’t believe it.  I don’t know if this counts as heresy, but being a good Venetian, he doesn’t care.  He makes a good case: For one thing, he says, it’s pretty suspicious that the body is never venerated, not even on April 25.  For another, he says that when Angelo Roncalli (patriarch of Venice from 1953-1958) became Pope John XXIII, he gave an important (unidentified) relic to the church in Alexandria.  Lino tells me this with that “What more do I need to say” look.

     What it all comes down to today is the long-stemmed red rose, the longer and redder the better. 

The custom is for a man to give one to the woman — or women — he loves.  Could be his wife, mother, sister, girlfriend, cousin.  No protocol on this, except for the wife or girlfriend, which are non-negotiable.  Anyway, as roses were costing at least five euros each this year, the typical man’s list has probably been cut back to the minimum.

     Lino is a traditionalist to the bone, or in this case, the rose.  He would go without lunch and possibly even without wine, if he had to, but he would never skip the rose.

     He even gives a rose to our club’s eight-oar gondola, or gondolone.  Of course she is named “San Marco.”

April 25 is a national holiday in Italy, but not because they’re all thinking of San Marco.  It commemorates the liberation of Italy from the Nazi-Fascist regime in 1945, which was accomplished by, among other things, organized insurrections in major Italian cities aided by the advancing American and British armies.

Lino was born in 1938, and he remembers the American troops arriving in Venice, and how he and all the other neighborhood kids ran to Piazzale Roma to see them and to score chewing gum and chocolate.  He also remembers going with his school to the Piazza San Marco on April 25 that year to celebrate, along with what was probably every other school in the city.  The Piazza was thronged with children, all the boys in short pants (like everybody else, Lino wore shorts, summer and winter –legs all chapped and red — till he was 14.)

Then all the children sang a patriotic Venetian song, “Torre degli avi,” which apostrophized the belltower of San Marco as the “tower of our ancestors.”  Of course it sounds better in Italian, but I’ve approximated a translation.  Quaint as this poetry may be, I try to read it imagining what it meant to everyone singing that day, all the children waving a little Italian flag.

Torre degli avi, faro di gloria/  A te guardavano le antiche navi/Fiere landiandosi sul nostro mar. 

Torre degli avi che alla vittoria/Allor la bronzea voce prestavi/Risorgi e vigila sul nostro mar!

Dal campanile mite un augurio/Di pace effondesi nel ciel d’aprile/I bronzi squillano lieti nel sol.

Lo stuol gentile di messi argentei/Nel sole tiepido del ciel d’aprile/Di pace si libera a vol.

Viva San Marco!  Del ciel d’Italia/Risorgi a gloria del campanile/Faro e segnacolo sul nostro mar.

Tower of our ancestors, beacon of glory/The ancient ships looked to you/As they launched themselves proudly over our sea.

Tower of our ancestors, which to victory/Lent its bronze voice/Rise up and keep watch over our sea.

From the gentle belltower an augury/Of peace pours out in the April sky,/The bronze rings joyously in the sun.

The throng of silvery messengers/Free themselves to fly/In the warm sun of the April sky of liberty.

Long live San Marco!  In the sky of Italy/Rise again to the glory of the belltower/Beacon and ensign over our sea.

The references to “our sea” aren’t an opinion, by the way; for centuries the upper Adriatic Sea was often called the Gulf of Venice.  This poster showing an undated French map is a good example: 

Speaking of World War 2, I came across a plaque the other day which Lino had never seen.  Maybe these things just interest me more than they do him, but then again, it’s only been up for four years.  It’s on the right-hand wall by the main entrance to Ca’ Farsetti, which is City Hall.  An excellent place for memorials, and there are several others.  Note: The C.L.N. was the National Liberation Committee, which organized the uprisings in 1945.  (Translation by me.) 

CITY OF VENICE

A.N.P.I.[NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ITALIAN PARTISANS]

FIAP [ITALIAN FEDERATION OF PARTISANS ASSOCIATIONS]

AVL [ASSOCIATION OF VOLUNTEERS OF LIBERTY]

MESSAGE OF GEN. MARK CLARK

TO THE C.L.N., THE AREA COMMAND

AND THE PEOPLE OF VENICE

ROME, MAY 3, 1945

I SEND MY CONGRATULATIONS TO THE CITIZENS OF VENICE FOR THE INSURRECTION COORDINATED WITH COMPLETE SUCCESS WHICH HAS BROUGHT THEIR CITY LIBERATION FROM THE GRIP AND CONTROL OF THE INVADERS.  WE CAN DECLARE THAT TRULY YOUR CITY HAS BEEN LIBERATED FROM WITHIN BY ARMED FORCES OF THE VOLUNTEER CORPS OF FREEDOM AND WITH THE HELP AND ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE ENTIRE POPULATION.  THE PORT AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES OF VENICE ARE INTACT AND THE ENEMY WAS NOT PERMITTED TO DEFACE THE MANY BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS WHICH SPEAK OF YOUR MARVELOUS TRADITION OF CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION.  WHEN THE FORCES OF THE FIFTEENTH GROUP OF THE ARMY ENTERED YOUR CITY THEY FOUND THAT LIFE WAS BEING CARRIED OUT IN ITS NORMAL RHYTHM.  I RENDER HOMAGE TO THE WORK ACCOMPLISHED BY THE NATIONAL LIBERATION COMMITTEE WHICH ORGANIZED ADN DIRECTED THE OPERATIONS IN SUCH A WAY AS TO PREVENT USELESS DAMAGE TO THE CITY AND THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD. 

THE CITY OF VENICE WILL SURELY  HAVE A NOTABLE PART IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF A FREE AND INDEPENDENT ITALY.

I could go on for quite some time, long after you’ve gone to bed, but I’ll stop just now with one more thing.  There is a series of plaques, each affixed near a bridge, which recall the fate of each individual who was the victim of a particular episode of partisan resistance to the Nazis.  Eventually I will track down the details of this episode; meanwhile, I can say that the text is always the same, though the name changes, of course.  I find its simplicity very moving.  Of course, people being killed for freedom is always moving, but the expression itself is lovely.

In that night of November 18, 1944, Luigi Giacopino, falling under the German lead [bullets] hastened the hour of the liberation of Italy from the tyrants both within and without.

By subscription of the people, the Commune

I am not especially interested in military history, as such, but here in Venice these exploits take on a strangely personal aspect.  It may be because the city is so small.  In any case, if you calibrate your vision to notice these things, you’ll come away from a walk around Venice with the sensation of having spent the day in the world’s most beautiful war museum.  Almost against my will, I have become moderately obsessed with these assorted memorials, and the complexity of the events they recall.  Rudimentary as my knowledge may still be, they too have become part of my personal Venice.

The glamor of Renaissance Venice — doges!  admirals!  lots of fancy costumes! — has obscured the twentieth century from general interest, but it is a period which I have come to realize is just as rich and poignant and desperate as anything from the glory days of the Venetian Republic.  Both world wars left all sorts of scars here, not mention relics of the failed uprising of 1848 against the Austrian occupation and assorted other depredations.  So while your taste may not run to cannonballs and unexploded bombs, I’m going to be showing them to you anyway, from time to time.  Venice deserves admiration, not only for its splendor and power and daring and all those things that make us feel so swell, but also for its suffering and its endurance.  You’ll be amazed there’s any city left standing, once you start looking around, even if all that happened before the tourist onslaught turned Venice into another kind of battleground.