Famous series of paintings reproduced in contemporary engravings by Visentini. Wonderful view of 18th-century Venice; thorough text by J. Links. 50 illustrations.

This book is a sweeping historical portrait of the floating city of Venice from its foundations to the present day. Joanne M. Ferraro considers Venice's unique construction within an amphibious environment and identifies the Asian, European and North African exchange networks that made it a vibrant and ethnically diverse Mediterranean cultural centre. Incorporating recent scholarly insights, the author discusses key themes related to the city's social, cultural, religious and environmental history, as well as its politics and economy. A refuge and a pilgrim stop; an international emporium and centre of manufacture; a mecca of spectacle, theatre, music, gambling and sexual experimentation; and an artistic and architectural marvel, Venice's allure springs eternal in every phase of the city's fascinating history.

Half a millennium of English and American fantasies of Venice: this collection of essays by leading critics in the field explores the continued and continuing fascination of travellers, writers, artists, theatre workers and film makers with the amphibious and ambiguous city in the lagoon. There is hardly another place in Europe that has become so much of a palimpsest, inscribed with the fantasies, the dreams and nightmares of generations of foreigners, and this turns Venetian Views, Venetian Blinds into a particularly pertinent case study of the ways cultural difference within Europe is experienced, enacted and constructed. The essays range across five centuries - from the Renaissance to our postmodern present, from Shakespeare and his contemporary Coryate to recent novels, detective fiction and films - and, in contrast to previous studies focussing on the Grand Tour, they emphasise more recent developments and how they continue or disrupt traditional ways of perceiving - or being blind to! - Venice.

A captivating memoir of living on the streets along California’s Highway 1, for fans of Mistakes to Run With and Nearly Normal. At twenty-one, Ceilidh Michelle was homeless, drifting through countercultural communities along California’s coast, from Venice Beach to Slab City to Big Sur. This restless and turbulent time began when she was sleeping on her sister’s couch in Vancouver and decided to become a yoga disciple in California. Denied entry at the US border in Washington state, and stuck overnight in the Greyhound station, her already shaky pilgrimage began to take another direction, away from the inward sanctuary of an ashram and toward the sea and light and noise of Venice Beach, and eventually up Highway 1 to the desert. Having spent much of her youth outrunning family turmoil, the peripatetic lifestyle once key to Michelle’s survival is now a habit she can’t or won’t break—unless it breaks her first. Sleeping in parking lots, camping out in abandoned beach cottages and mansions, she finds community, easy and fraught, with fellow travellers: musicians, veterans, ex-cons, addicts, drug dealers, artists and con artists. Still, dreams and fleeting notions of home fuel and shadow every encounter, haunting the places she stays, offering moments of both grace and violence. Told with deadpan humour and insightful lyricism, Vagabond is an observant and at times shimmering narrative suspended between a traumatic past and an as yet unimagined future. Coursing through it is the story of an emergent writer just beginning to find sanctuary in her own creative instincts.

Join Turner (1775-1851) as he progresses through the city, beginning at St. Mark's Basilica with the campanile towering above and the coral-colored exterior of the Doge's Palace. Drift onward toward the Bridge of Sighs and take a detour past the Hotel Europa, where Turner preferred to stay. Travel onward past the Giardini Reali, the Punta della Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute on your way to San Giorgio Maggiore and the Accademia. Drift away from the bustling markets around the Rialto on the Grand Canal heading toward the Frari and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, taking in the inspirations for Venetian masters such as Tintoretto and Veronese.

Famous series of paintings reproduced in contemporary engravings by Visentini. Wonderful view of 18th-century Venice; thorough text by J. Links. 50 illustrations.