Customer Reviews

The World of Venice: Revised Edition

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This book is a sheer delight for any visitor who has been charmed by Venice and longs to go back. Not for the unitiated, this is not a travel book for those who have never been there. It assumes some knowledge of the city and often teases with references to locations and legends that are familiar to visitors of the Veneto but which can be maddeningly vague for the person who has never experienced the phantasmagoria that Venice can be. Beautifully written, it evokes the moods and majesty and, sometimes, historical horrors of the world's most fascinating city.

Although I am an enormous fan of Morris's later works, this early study of Venice (originally published in England simply as VENICE) is just not up to the level of her later work. When it came out Morris hadn't yet mastered either her style or her level of tone: as a result, the work reads much too preciously, with far too many trivial examples to support her points, too much xenophobic snobbery aimed towards tourists (something Morris later worjked very hard *against* in her other works), and an experience of venice that doesn;t really seem to capture the city at all. When this book wasd written several other studies of Italian cities were coming out by older, more experienced writers, and it's useful to compare them with Morris's VENICE: Mary McCarthy's STONES OF FLORENCE and VENICE OBSERVED are much more readable, and Elizabeth Bowen's beautiful A TIME IN ROME captures the city in a much more recognizable way than Morris's now-dated study does. but this was a useful text for Morris to correct the immaturities of his style before he (later she) went on to master the genre and become its leading living practitioner.

You'll be fascinated by this book if you've never been to Venice and don't expect to ever go (you'll probably change your mind before getting very far into the book, though); if you haven't been yet but will go soon; or if you've already been there. In my own case, I read the book in preparation for a trip to "the Serenissima". Once I was there, I had the odd experience of feeling I knew the place intimately, even though I had never personally seen it, and I didn't know where anything was. I also enjoyed seeing the city and its monuments greatly, having been armed with scores of legends and anecdotes about them. And now that my trip is over, I'm anxious to re-read much of the book, so that I can compare my own experience of the city with Morris's.

Morris's is an intimate, thorough, and honest portrait of Venice. Although she is biased in favor of the city (she calls it "the most beautiful city on earth, only waiting to be admired", and she admitted in a reading I attended that it was her favorite of the dozens of cities she's written about), she describes in great detail the flaws and annoyances of the place. Her style of writing is magnificent and perfectly parallels the character of the city. She uses some vivid and very creative metaphors; one of my favorites was her description of an old painting as "an orgy of fleshy limbs and cherubs".

My main complaint about "The World of Venice" is that it's too thorough. Especially if you haven't been to the city, the endless lists of the "minor monuments" of the city, the countless fortress islands in the Venetian lagoon, and all of the Titians and Tintorettos to be found around the city, are tedious. At times I really had to make an effort to wade through the minutia.

Another disappointment is the book's method of describing the history of Venice. You learn the city's history in bits and pieces and in random chronological order through the anecdotes throughout the book. There is no overall view of the history of the place, and in general the book seems to assume that you already know it all anyway. I still recommend reading the book, but do a little reading elsewhere on Venetian history first.

I am addicted both to travel and, increasingly, to writing about travel. Of the excessive number of books and articles I have read, this may be my favorite piece of travel writing of all.

I visited Venice for the first time at the end of a brief trip to Italy, in the company of my love interest of the time. We had left but little time for Venice, first because she had told me it was small and quickly seen, and second because so many had warned me away from the place as being too touristy, too smelly, malfunctioning.

I was thus unprepared to fall for the fabled city as I did. I'll spare readers here my poor attempt to capture how I almost immediately felt about the place; photos don't capture Venice and my amateurish prose won't either. You truly have to be there in its unique atmosphere of urban quiet, amid the constant undulation of the water lapping against its stone streets, to feel the unique feel of the city. And you must linger there long enough to discover its small, unguarded treasures, off the beaten path of the tourist guides. And you have to have a sharper sense for self-expression than I do. Fortunately, Jan Morris qualifies on all counts.

The next time I went to Venice, it was alone, after the breakup of a relationship I had thought was heading into marriage. This time I was ready; I had devoured Garry Wills's book on Venice (also quite good, by the way) and arrived ready to tunnel into the city's true heart. It was one of the most rewarding travel experiences I have ever had, my first full day there being the best. The view at dawn was stunning; the silhouettes of St. Mark's spires, domes and sculptures seemed just a few feet away when I opened a creaky window as a deep cobalt blue sky was just starting to brighten. But again, enough from me. . .

Staggering around Venice for a few days as giddy as if I'd found a new love, I went browsing in the bookstore for souvenirs on my last day before departure and found Morris's book. I had known only Morris's histories and till that time did not know of her great career as a travel writer.

Morris's Venice was the perfect find. This is a travel book for those who deeply love a place, or at least who know what it is like to deeply love a place and to want to possess all of it, to locate the hidden gems, to develop firmly held preferences as to which streets are best to walk along, and all the other pastimes that entertain the enthusiast.

Morris's book brings the scenes of Venice to life with an immediacy that is rarely encountered. Here she is on St. Mark's square: "The great Piazza of St. Mark, on a high summer day, is a rich medley of sounds: the chatter of innumerable tourists, the laughter of children, the deep bass-notes of the Basilica organ, the thin strains of the cafe orchestras, the clink of coffee cups, the rattling of maize in paper bags by sellers of bird food, the shouts of newspapermen, bells, clocks, pigeons, and all the sounds of the sea that seep into the square from the quayside around the corner. It is a heady, Alexandrian mixture."

She nails St. Mark's Basilica, too, "descended from Byzantium, by faith out of nationalism; and sometimes to its high ritual in the Basilica of St. Mark there is a tremendous sense of an eastern past, marbled, hazed and silken." Oh, yes.

The visitor to Venice eventually discovers the small out of the way places, too, like San Giorgio della Schiavoni: "It is no bigger than your garage, and its four walls positively smile with the genius of this delightful painter, the only Venetian artist with a sense of humor. Here is St. George lunging resolutely at his dragon. . here is St. Tryophonius with a very small well-behaved basilisk; and here the monks of St. Jerome's monastery. . . run in comical terror from the mildest of all possible lions."

I could go on, but I would risk some copyright infringement law, I'm sure.

Admittedly, this book is best for those who have been to Venice or who are planning a trip, but I assume that covers the vast majority of the people who link to this page. For these readers I unhesitatingly recommend this marvelous book.

This book (titled Venice in the UK) was first published in 1960 under the byline of James Morris, when its English author was a foreign correspondent living in Italy. The current edition's seamless blend of history, social commentary, and personal travel narrative make it essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in Venice. - Durant Imboden, Venice for Visitors, http://govenice.miningco.co

This is not a travel guide of the pedestrian Where to Stay? What to Buy? What are the Main Attractions before I move on to Florence and Rome? variety. It is an homage, a paean, a rhapsody to one of the most hauntingly beautiful places in the world. In revealing the most intimate secrets of La Serenissima, the most Serene Jewel of the Adriatic--secrets that only a lover would know, Morris captures the melancholy evanescence of a city that is preposterous in concept. Its light-refracted palaces, adorned by lace-fretted windows, seem suspended between sky and water. As insubstantial as glass, Venice resembles a dreamscape that has somehow transgressed the laws of gravity.

I am a chronic lover of Venice; I have experienced it from the tops of the Campaniles of San Giorgio and San Marco to the bottom of the Grand Canal (Yes! Just like the movie, except instead of being rescued by a handsome Venetian, I was fished out by brawny German tourists--what with my shearling jacket, corduroys and camera equipment it took three of them. I then suffered the green slime-covered humiliation of slopping back across the city to my hotel in the Frari, much to the glee of passing urchins.).

After reading Morris, though, I began to look at Venice with new eyes: Morris showed me where to find "the madcap menagerie" of sculpted lions, monsters, crocodiles and a myriad of other beasts, as well as enlightening me on the subtleties among their infinite attributes; Morris inspired me to scrtinize the walls; peer into the crannies; notice remarkable fragments of sculpture, including the bocche di leoni--renaissance mailboxes in the shape of gawping lion-heads, conveniently placed on the sides of churches for disgruntled members of the public to denounce their enemies anonymously. Morris taught me to savor the change in seasons, to delight in the restless play of the water as I stood on the quay of the Giudecca Canal contemplating the impossible magnificence of a rainbow arching over the bacino, from the Campanile of San Marco past the Campanile of San Giorgio (And there I stood without a camera, since it had rusted after my Grand Canal misadvenure!).

Morris taught me that Venice is a living entity of reflected light shimmering under the bridges; of muffled sound, except for lapping water and the plangent cries of terns. Morris taught me that this charmed city is the source of infinite possibilities, be they as simple as floating silently back and forth along the Canal Grande in the front seat of a vaporetto and breathing in the salt-caressed air, or ambling through Venice's singularly-deserted back streets; and--the greatest gift of all, Morris taught me to be blind to the gaudy profusion of souvenir shops; to be deaf to the great gaggles of tourists glutting the Piazza San Marco; to be immune to the insistent hawking of gondaliers, whose importunings stalk one "down the quays" . . . 'like an improper suggestion" [196].

As the author suggests [102], "past and present are curiously interwoven" in Venice. In a city where the very plaster peeling from its crumbling ancient bricks has a story to tell, the erosions of Time become irrelevant.

Jan Morris has written a wonderfully personal guide to a city she loves and has a real rapport with. I read it long before I went to Venice and then I read it again after I finally went. Either way is a great way to vicariously imagine what Venice is like or to wander again over the paths and canals that made your visit a memorable one!

Still one of the great classics about Venice. Author Morris presents the big picture but also fills in the small details that add color, character, history and life to this incomparable city. My only criticism is that the photos are poor and too few in number. Also Recommended: John Julius Norwich's 'A History of Venice'.

... I read [this] book prior to a week-long trip to Venice. This book quite simply accomplished none of its objectives. It is a poor "guidebook" and is poorly written and uninteresting in terms of a travelogue--to quote Simon: "Abysmal with a capital A." The history and art of Venice are covered better in books from those genres. The only upside is that it is short. Yuck, what a waste of time. My advice is: get a novel about Venice if you like novels, a guidebook if you want that, an art book, or a history book. At least you'll get something out of those--this one tries all of these and fails. Actually, in terms of a travelogue, "Vendela in Venice" far surpassess any other Venice book I have seen. Although I originally bought it because it is considered a children's book, it is not dumbed down at all and adults will enjoy it...