3 days ago
The beautiful spot on my Grand Tour that left me speechless
Arriving in Venice by train feels like an entrance through a stage door. First comes the shipping town of Marghera, a behind-the-scenes tangle of scaffolding, gantries and harlequin-coloured containers. Then the metal and grime are rinsed away by the lagoon, and from the water ascend domes and towers like painted scenery on hidden props.
I can see why Grand Tourists were so keen to get to La Serenissima — as I had been four hours earlier, fleeing the classical solemnity of Rome. Venice offered sensual release; a place to wear masks and play out comedies and tragedies. After drinking heavily in taverns, aristos were reeled into gambling dens, or ridotti, where they squandered inheritances and fell into the consoling arms of courtesans. In 1730 Charles Stanhope, later the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, complained that his brother had 'spent a great deal of money on a Venetian woman, whom he thought in love with him'.
I emerge from Santa Lucia railway station and take a water taxi to Casino di Venezia, the world's oldest casino, founded in 1638. A red carpet runs from the jetty on the Grand Canal to the VIP wing in Ca' Vendramin Calergi, a Renaissance palace once home to Wagner. I store my suitcase at the coat check, pay a £40 entry fee and pass suits of armour before entering a salon of old-world glamour — cut-glass chandeliers, time-softened brocade, Italians in spiffy suits and gowns crowding round green baize. I whip out my phone. 'No pictures,' a doorman snaps (
I've never gambled, but I'm determined to act the part, so I strut to a roulette table and slide into a seat. The croupier looks at me and raises an eyebrow. 'It's my first time,' I say. The croupier raises both eyebrows. I slide my only chip, €100, onto red.
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As the ball clatters I feign indifference, adjusting cufflinks I've forgotten to put on. It lands: red. Elated, I go again: black — win. Red? Another win. Onlookers gather as my chip stack grows. A man in a velvet jacket claps me on the shoulder. I feel like a million ducats.
Now I'm about £600 up — and cocky. 'I'll put it all on black,' I announce. 'Tutto?' the croupier asks. I meet his gaze. 'Tutto.'
Spin, rattle … red. There is a collective groan. Head hung, I make for the jetty and hail a water taxi to the lido. The driver says that it will cost £100. I briefly consider swimming back, then pay up.
The next morning I wake at the Hotel Excelsior to sea views framed by a Moorish arch — an orientalist flourish born of Venice's fascination with the East, kindled by Marco Polo's 13th-century travels. Today the hotel is quiet, but during the Venice Film Festival it teems with actors, who in Grand Tour days ranked low on the social ladder — somewhere between jesters and lepers. They arrive in water taxis at the hotel's private pier, from where I'm departing for St Mark's Square.
Fifteen minutes later I'm passing shops of gilded carnival masks, synonymous with Venetian romance but once worn by noblemen waging bloody vendettas. I eat superb sea bream at Ristorante Marco Polo, where gondoliers slump at tables like extras between takes (mains from £16;
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Then it's onwards to Santa Maria Formosa Square, which is dotted with painters touching up vedute, Venetian landscapes popularised by Canaletto in the 18th century.
Like proto-Instagrammers, Grand Tourists hung vedute in cabinet rooms to flex on their friends. They also coveted selfies — Pompeo Batoni painted more than 200 milords, some of them dressed in 'exotic' costume: the scholar Richard Payne Knight was partial to a toga; the Cornish aristocrat Francis Basset preferred Turkish robes.
This is why I've slipped into a photo studio in the Cannaregio district, where the owner, Leontine Hamer, squeezes me into breeches and a frock coat. She is transforming me into Casanova, the 18th-century Venetian who, like me, gambled, impersonated nobility and was cursed with great beauty. As Hamer snaps me against a veduta-style backdrop, I borrow poses from the nude male model I'd drawn in Rome (from £65;
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I reluctantly peel off the costume afterwards. Some Grand Tourists never did — swallowing up young aristocrats, Venice once spat out 'macaroni', the sneering nickname for those who returned to Britain in foppish Italian dress.
This polyester patrician is about to be humbled. I've been invited for espresso with the author and hostess Servane Giol, an expert on Venice who has offered to point me towards its lesser-known places. Buzzed through an unmarked door near Ponte dell'Accademia, I enter a palazzo of stone walls washed in chiaroscuro light. We sit on a terrace above the canal, my Casanova photo tucked away in my pocket like a filthy secret.
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I'm asked about my travels by Giol, who is cultivated and graceful, so everything a Grand Tourist aspires to become. I admit that I'm exhausted by all the prancing and vice. 'Go to San Lazzaro degli Armeni,' she says, her voice smooth as Murano glass (it's an island monastery in the lagoon where Lord Byron went to scrub his soul clean). We finish our drinks and I bottle a courtly hand-kiss as I leave.
The next morning I board a violin on water: a 1970s mahogany speedboat (tours from £520 for eight; The city retreats as my driver, Matteo, opens the throttle. Ahead, a bell tower points heavenward, a mute promise of absolution. 'Welcome to Byron island!' Matteo chirps. For once I'm speechless, overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.
I step into water-lapped stillness — a monastery of Istrian stone cloistered among gently swaying palm trees. Monks in black cassocks drift through sun-scorched arches next to a garden where roses are grown for jam. I follow them towards the onion-domed campanile, entering a chapel of blue tilework and stained glass. Standing at the altar, I feel so spiritually awake that I might start speaking in tongues — or Armenian, which Byron studied here for six months in 1816 with the monks, Mekhitarists who have lived on the island since a Venetian decree in 1717. The poet's stay threatened to reform him, inspiring what he called 'conviction that there is another, better world, even in this life' (tours £9pp; +39 0415260104).
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I return to the moor pier as night falls like a velvet curtain on my time in Venice. 'Where next?' Matteo asks. 'The railway station, please,' I answer. 'Then onwards to Vienna.' Tourists waiting for the vaporetto lift their phones as we pull away. I consider bowing, but the moment has passed.
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Jack Ling was a guest of Byway, which has ten nights' B&B from £2,423pp, including rail travel from the UK ( and Hotel Excelsior, which has room-only doubles from £378 (
