Posted on 05/29/2022 5:28:56 AM PDT by BenLurkin
On the night of May 15-16, the façade of the Redentore church -- designed by Renaissance "starchitect" Andrea Palladio, and the site of perhaps the city's most famous festival -- was vandalized.
A portion of the façade -- built in white Istrian stone, from what was part of the Venetian empire when the church was constructed -- was daubed in pink, with what looked like an equation scrawled on top of it.
The three-square-meter area sits beneath the statue of St. Francis of Assisi, just to the right of the entrance as you ascend its famous white-stone staircase.
It follows the vandalism of another Venice church, Sant'Antonin, which was daubed with graffiti a few days earlier, according to local paper La Nuova.
And on Thursday night, two American tourists decided to strip off and dive naked into a canal in the residential district of Castello.
Shocked locals observed them swimming for around five minutes in the water -- into which nearby houses drain their sewage -- before toweling down and returning to their Airbnb.
CCTV cameras dotted around have helped solve some of the issues. Authorities have already tracked down the person responsible for vandalizing the Redentore church...
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro called the vandalism a "scar" on the basilica, which he called a "symbolic place of Venetian traditions."
"Those responsible must not go unpunished, they must pay!" he wrote on Twitter, calling for more powers to be given to justices of the peace.
"It will take hours to restore at a cost we can't yet calculate. We should keep these barbarians in a cell for at least a couple of nights."
"Enough of this havoc," wrote the mayor after another incident -- a religious statue being destroyed in Marghera, on the Venice mainland.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Too much vino.
Tie them under a boat in the canal.
I've only been in Venice once, when we took our daughters to Europe for the first time and did the tourist 101 thing: London (three days); Paris (three days); Venice (a day and a half); Rome (a week). Venice was actually an afterthought that I shoehorned in on the way to Rome. I felt like we put a bit of a dent in Rome, though there are still many places I'd like to see. We hardly scratched the surface in the other cities.
This is an unavoidable problem in much of Europe.
In Venice, we did see St. Marks and the Doge's Palace, which are must see's. We were traveling by train and stayed within easy distance of the train station, so we were close enough to the Rialto Bridge to get that out of our system. And we did a boat excursion that stopped at Murano (the glass factory), Burano (charming and quiet) and Torcello (the old church with remains dating to the late Roman period; the oldest church in Venice). We managed to get around on the canals but needed another day to get fluent on the system, and we did a lot of walking, which in Venice involves surprises down every alleyway. That's a lot for a day and a half, and when we left, I was kicking myself for not having done at least one more day, as we had passed by no end of places that called out for exploration. If I ever go back, I'd think seriously about staying on one of the outer islands and commuting in by boat.
I'm sure Padova is great too. Italy is full of sights from one end to the other, and I want to get to Malta someday as well. We shall see. But one does need to see the Doge's Palace, if only to understand that Louis XIV was just a nouveau riche status seeker when he built Versailles.
“two American tourists “
Understand. I was stationed in Italy for 3 years and lived about 50 miles away (Aviano).
Yes, Venice is a lovely city but the thing I didn’t like is that the Venetians were all totally stuck on themselves and (other than some snobby restaurants in Rome), I found that to be unique in the entire country. We had some friends in the local area whose family owned one of the homes directly on a canal and so, when we visited, we stayed in that home and didn’t have to bother with a hotel or anything. But, again, I just found the attitude of the Venetian people appalling. After the first year, we just stopped going because of that (even though we could’ve gotten preferred status at Carnival or the Film Festival or any of the other big events).
Always found that the attitude of people in places like Padova, Verona, or Bologna, although still pretty touristy, were so much better we just gravitated there.
Anyway, if you’re ever able to tick Padova off your list, I recommend the Basilica of Sant’Antonio. They have a collection of St. Anthony’s relics there that will blow your mind LOL. And if you haven’t already ticked Rome off your list, I recommend renting a flat over renting a hotel. Far better experience IMHO.
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