the city sleeps tonight

We walk by San Marco Square everyday before and after work, and no matter how adroitly we weave our way through the dense mass of tourists and pigeons, I am quite certain we end up appearing in one or two photographs uninvited.


There is a massive queue to enter the church at one end of the piazza, and according to some sources, that takes no less than four to five hours. Perhaps it is because I have been living here for three weeks (or knowing that I will be here for another three weeks) but i feel no sense of urgency to join in that queue to enter the most famous attraction in Venice.


"When a tourist passes through a city, the place is exposed to his gaze as something that lacks history, that is eternal, amounting to a sum of edifices that have always been there and will always remain as they are at the very moment of his arrival, for the tourist is unable to keep track of a city's historical transformation or to perceive the utopian impulse propelling the city into the future."


I'm not sure if i would end up going in, and I'm not even sure if I particularly want to. It's not that I'm discounting it as a historical monument- one with a beautiful, majestic facade at that- rather I would not want it to somehow define or complete this trip to Venice. After all, these "tourist attractions" did not exist from the beginning as attractions, it was the tourist that created them. There is a certain quiet joy to be found instead, in exploring the calles, piazzas and campos by foot and with no fixed destination, as it is by walking through these interlacing, unique streets in one of the few pedestrian-only places in the world, that one can really navigate the city. Venice is not really defined by its buildings or monuments, but like any other city, by overlapping memories created from personal experience. Thus far, I can't say that I have been through the entire place, but it has been a rather pleasurable journey. Of which, I am only halfway through.




I think I shall wander around some more.






x
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