A Month in Venice

where i’m going.

It’s already a truism that COVID-19 has changed us all. While COVID has certainly changed my life in a number of ways, one obvious change was that my plan to spend a month in Italy in 2021 was impossible!

In April 2022 I’ve decided to make the trip and I’m headed to Venice. I’m necessarily travelling on my own, without an organised group and, on this occasion, without family. It will be unusual to be in Italy without sharing my experiences with others, and I still want to communicate the joy of returning there and, particularly, my longstanding passion for Venice and its history.

Venice has one of Italy’s proudest and most intriguing histories, and a thousand-year legacy as a Mediterranean empire. Many of us have passed through; fewer have spent extended time there, and I’d like to share my opportunity to do this with you.

What I’m doing there.

In this informal course, I’ll present a different window onto Venice each week by combining lecturettes with a guided mini-tour. Each week I’ll upload 60+ minutes of recorded material, which will include:

• a short recorded presentation, with history, art history, maps and detailed images of Venetian places and artefacts

• a film of a guided mini-tour I’ll take you on to different parts of Venice, some of which you may not have seen yet, with my commentary recorded live

All of the material will be accessed via a password-protected website, along with a few suggestions for further reading.

Finally, in the fourth week you’ll have the option to join me live on a Zoom walk from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto (weather permitting), with the opportunity to ask me questions as I go along - and possibly determine my route!

What you’ll discover.

While this is not a formal lecture course, the topics I’ll be thinking about each week are as follows:

1. Construction: building a city in the middle of a lagoon – how and why?! Walk through a Venetian sestiere (district), and learn how the built environment ‘works’.

2. Islands: travel to Torcello island, the lagoon’s earliest permanent settlement, and explore Venice’s love for the Byzantine. Visit San Francesco del Deserto, an isolated Franciscan island-monastery.

3. Scuole: encounter the great confraternities of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Venice, from San Giovanni Evangelista to the Scuola Grande di San Marco, San Rocco and a number of minor scuole. Encounter great painting cycles there by Carpaccio, Bellini and Tintoretto.

4. Green: how sustainable has life in Venice been, from its Dark Ages origins to now? What about cruise ships, invasive plants and animals, rising water levels? Explore sand banks, salt marshes, island market gardens (orti) and some of Venice’s hidden green spaces.

When you can access the materials.

• The material will be uploaded in four weekly instalments, in the period 01 – 30 April 2022. Each instalment will comprise 60+ minutes of material.

• The live Zoom session will be held on Thursday 21 April 2022, 6.00pm AEST / 10.00am CEST. It will be approximately 30-45 minutes in duration.

You’ll receive the password to the protected course page before the material is uploaded on 01 April 2022. The course page will automatically refresh as new materials are uploaded. You are welcome to download them (but please don’t share them with others), and there is no plan to take down the course page.

The Zoom login for the live walk from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge will be emailed to all participants before 21 April 2022.

About me.

My formal studies are in Italian language, literature, history and culture, and my PhD was awarded by the University of Sydney, Australia. For over fifteen years, I’ve led small group cultural tours to Italy, in particular, as well as to Spain, France, Turkey, Japan and the USA. I’m also a national lecturer for the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society (ADFAS), and regularly offer art history and Italian history courses at the Italian Institute of Culture, Sydney, and here at The Short Course.