San Marco by Moonlight
Look at the lights in San Marco. A perfect symmetry of lamps amid the diffused light from the café-bars. Listen to the music from the small orchestras. Sway in time to the beat of the songs they play, usually easy listening from the 20th century.
Gaze at the Basilica and look up at the golden mosaics with the domes rising up into the (hopefully) moonlit sky.
Lamplit Lagoon
Walk from the Piazza out towards the Bacino. In the darkness this will often be silvery, reflected water. Still, luminous, dark waters with shadows of empty gondolas adding a dimension to the scene. Morris describes the ‘Kaleidoscopic basin outside St Marks’ and it is much more of a kaleidoscopic merging of colours and shapes in the evening.
All you need to do is walk and look at lights, the patterns they make on the buildings and canals. Consider how the lamps enlighten the city and somehow it seems a different city in greyscale without the ochres, teracottas, the warm white colours of the buildings and the everchanging greens and blues of the canals in daylight. Consider the contrast.
Reflections on Venice: Stories • Places • Atmosphere
Slow Travel in La Serenissima – Bespoke Routes – Exploring Differently
