Venice

Venice has undoubtedly deserved this comparison with a woman of pleasure. She offers herself decked out to passers-by irrespective of gender, age and temperament, while all her gestures promise no disappointment for those who are tempted. Since the art of temptation has a great tradition in Venice, wearing a mask is a necessary but by no means sufficient prerequisite. As early as 1543 a dress code regulated what clothes courtesans and street actors could wear, which enabled them to put on masks and various disguises even on weekdays - not to mention that an attractive appearance, grandiose costumes and powdered wigs themselves represented an entry to social circles, where even at the time highly esteemed women of pleasure were not able to get in without disguise.

For several hundred years Venice has regarded giving pleasure as her profession and, indeed, as you walk by the always interesting palazzos and elegant Renaissance residential buildings, as you cross the squares with the scent of the sea, or walk through the small narrow alleys it is impossible not to feel the city's lustful and sweetish breath. Whether you are strolling in the small quiet streets of the former red light 'Carampagne' district, beginning at the corner of the Ponte delle Tette, where from 1713 the city's sugar refinery fittingly used to stand, or are wandering on the Rialto, where the inebriating smell of the fish market mixes with the characteristic Venetian stench of sewage even in the winter, a desire takes hold of you with such an elementary force that it is simply impossible to resist. Only here, by the bank of the Grand Canal, you realise why Gustav Aschenbach in Thomas Mann's short novel was not able to leave Venice to escape from the cholera. He could not resist the tales of the city and the colourful array of boats. Has it never struck anyone that lounging in a gondola on the lustreless black cushion of an armchair-like seat, polished like a coffin, generates the world's softest, most erotic and pleasurable feeling.

Venice is like a good lover. She can always reveal something new, she always tempts ingeniously. If you have been to the Piazza San Marco a thousand times and know each tiny element of its 3^rd-century, 4000-square-metre mosaic and all the Basilica's altar paintings, she will still let you in to her most secret and carefully guarded treasures. If need be, she will bring forward a drop of the Virgin Mary's milk or Christ's blood, a nail from his cross or a thorn from his crown. She can present 'the land of the unknown cannibals' in the Sala dello Scudo, the wall map collection in the Doges' Palace, and in the Gallerie dell'Accademia Veronese's painting The Last Supper, which created a huge scandal, obliging the Renaissance master to rename it Feast in the House of Levi following ecclesiastical protests. The dignitaries of the Holy Office were allegedly shocked by a dog, a jester, drunk Germans and dwarfs included in the picture, but since they had insisted on Veronese they were forced to find some placatory solution.

Although it is easy to survey Venice, even on foot, she does not let our dates easily become routine. Each street corner or tiny square promises the experience of an exciting rendezvous. It is, in fact, change which makes you delighted. The tiny city centre alone is crossed by approximately 100 canals and there are more than 400 bridges throughout Venice. City etiquette as well as the self-esteem of the streets require that even the narrowest alley has its own name: narrow mews are called calle, shopping streets, even when they are as narrow as a calle, are referred to as salizzad or calle larga (i.e. long street); the tiny side streets are caletta and those by the rio are named fondamenta. Squares can be referred to in at least five ways - piazza, piazetta, campo, campiello or corte. Means of public transport, although they are all water vehicles, include ten types of gondolas, vaporettos and topos, which are also suitable for carrying washing machines and the like. Even the bells of the Campanile, which for centuries have regulated the rhythm of Venice, are able to ring in five different ways. Today it is only the marangona and the nona which ring for noon and midnight every day, but should it be necessary the maleficio, the trottiera and the mezza terza could also be tolling. It depends whether the bells should be calling out for an execution, as in the last century, perhaps be urging the noblemen's horses to trot to the Great Council held in the Doges' Palace, or summoning the governors.

Fortunately, Venice no longer eggs you on these days. As mentioned, she is like a good lover. While she slowly conquers your heart, she lets you think you are in control and are determining how things go. She offers herself in a clever way - always what you want to receive and just as much as you are ready for. Instead of five-star sights, she sometimes offers only a park, the paradise of Palazzo Savorgnano boasting with statues, citrus trees and stone carvings from Roman times, or the courtyard of the Corte dell'Anatomia, which was named after the dissecting room which operated here in 1368.

Another time she wants you to enthusiastically give yourself to her calettas or campiellos, then she lures you to an osterie for a spritzer, a glass of white wine laced with some Bitter, Aperolal or Select (types of aperitif), for a Prosecco or Sgroppino. This is the locals' secret, kept under lock and key, mixed from lemon sorbet, vodka and Prosecco. Al Bottegon near the Accademia Bridge serves a very good one, as does the nearby Enoteca do Colonne with its cosy atmosphere, where the heavenly beverage is offered with baccala (salted cod) on crispy bread and a large portion of musetto cold meat. Furthermore, this is a place where you bump into not only tourists but also locals, who really generate the city's true ambiance. As Hemingway writes, a city can only be known if we devote enough time to hear its silence.

"I should live here. I could do quite well off my pension, although not in the Gritti. In a room of a house by the water where boats come and go. I could read in the morning, walk in the city until lunch time and could view the Tintorettos in the Accademia every day or go to the Scuola San Roccoba. I could eat in good, cheap taverns behind the market or in the evening my landlady might cook for me."

Thus Hemingway once wrote in a letter. As you read his lines you somehow wish for nothing else, neither lust nor rapture, but some embracing quiet togetherness ... to admire the Grand Canal with its boats and throbbing barks, the houses casting a shadow on the opposite bank, the early morning bustle of the market, the showman in a white west in front of the station, the graphic artist drawing in charcoal under the arcades of the Doges' Palace, to mingle in the carnival atmosphere and to try to peep under and behind as many magnificent masks and spectacular costumes as possible.

Orsolya Csejtei