EUROPE | ITALY
Italy: Exploring sun-splashed Venice's city squares
Veni, vidi, Venice: A summer sojourn reveals a serene yet steamy city. Sip a refreshing aperitivo and enjoy the wonders of it all.
Venice, Italy
Pianissimo, pianissimo.
That's how morning comes on the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. Pigeons dawdle around a trash can, in no rush to pillage. The young woman who tends the newsstand gives her dog a bowl of water. Then the grate at the Bar all'Orologio clangs open, a sure sign that another summer day has begun in Venice.
The paved square -- or campo -- around the Church of Santa Maria Formosa is one of dozens hidden among the tangled streets of Venice, affectionately known as La Serenissima, the serene one. Each campo is the hub of its own little universe, where a church, bank, bar, tobacco shop, ancient well head and long shopping street supply all the necessities of life, from religion to pasta.
I'd been to Venice before, gawked at San Marco -- St. Mark's -- seen the Veroneses at the Accademia, ridden the water buses, or vaporetti. When I returned last month, I settled into three little campi not nearly as famous as San Marco but full of wonders that I never had to stray far from my hotel to explore.
CAMPO SANTA MARIA FORMOSA, CASTELLO
Leave San Marco from the piazza's northeastern corner, cross the Campo San Zulian, jog left, then right and if you're lucky you'll end up on the Campo Santa Maria Formosa.
The church that gives the campo its name is thought to have been founded in the 7th century but was rebuilt in the early Renaissance by architect Mauro Coducci. It has an exceptional setting, within the square, not on a flank, and a comely campanile that seems to have been decorated with a tube of frosting.
The campo is a large rectangle bounded on two sides by canals where gondoliers fan themselves while waiting for the next romantic couple. The other two sides are lined by fine palazzi with peaked Venetian Byzantine windows. Some are given over to small businesses -- the neighborhood pharmacy and funeral parlor -- but others, like the Palazzo Querini-Stampaglia, have grander purposes. Reached by its own little bridge, this palazzo is a library and picture gallery. Across the campo is the imposing Ruzzini Palace Hotel recently opened as a luxury hotel.
I stayed at the Hotel Casa Santa Maria Formosa around the corner. Like many small Venetian hotels, it has no sign or elevator. The reception desk is minuscule, and the air conditioner in the breakfast room couldn't cope with the heat.
But my room was cool enough, decorated with the warring fabrics, patterns, decoupage and gilding well known to budget-loving aficionados of Venice.
I liked going out in the relative cool of the early morning, getting a newspaper, having my first cappuccino at the Bar all'Orologio and watching one of the last authentic neighborhoods in Venice come to life. In the last several decades, rising real estate prices have driven residents out; the population dropped from 171,000 in 1951 to fewer than 62,000 in 2006, leaving the city a tourist ghetto.
But you wouldn't know it in this campo, where I watched men with briefcases hurrying to work. Old women pushing shopping carts quarreled at the vegetable stand. Finally, the tourists started coming out, studying maps until they got the idea of looking up at the church.
It is one of the most companionable in Venice, with two main facades, one facing the canal, the other overlooking the campo where tourists enter. As the interior restoration proceeds, visitors can watch workers on ladders scour stone moldings and chip away old paint.
Reconstructed many times over the last millennium, the church now takes the form of a Latin cross superimposed on a Greek cross, paved with smooth stones set in diamond-shaped patterns. Side chapels were endowed by the guild of cofferers, who made dowry chests for Venetian brides, and the guild of fruit sellers, who dedicated a shrine to their patron, St. Jehosophat.
Among the church's treasures is Bartolomeo Vivarini's "Our Lady of Mercy" triptych (1473). With no need to rush off, I found my own favorites, including the wood-backed "Holy Father With Angels" (late 15th century, attributed to Lazzaro Bastiani) and an altar relief (1719) by Giuseppe Torretti, showing a decapitated St. Barbara, her head rolling on the ground.
Back outside, I looked into shops along the Calle Lunga Santa Maria Formosa. At the Schegge atelier, I watched the owner paint handmade Carnival masks, while at Casa Mattiazzi Veneto, wine from casks was being sold in recycled plastic water bottles.
I discussed the derivation of the word "campo" with Luigi Frizzo, proprietor of the Acqua Alta bookstore, and made a dinner reservation at Osteria al Mascaron after seeing the squid and sardines on the antipasto counter.
Osteria al Mascaron -- from mascherone, a kind of talismanic monster sculpted on many facades in Venice -- is decorated with old copper pots, books and a picture of Elvis Costello. It was hot and stuffy the night I dined there, but the food transported me. After the olive oil-drenched antipasti, I had a perfect plate of pesto spaghetti with basil that tasted so fresh I could have sworn it was still growing.
About the time catechism class let out, I found a table at Zanzibar on the campo. I ordered a Spritz, made of white wine, soda water and a bitter-tasting aperitivo called Aperol. It doesn't sound good, but once you get used to it, nothing else will do to cut the heat of a Venetian summer.
Zanzibar is close to the western flank of the church that bears one of the city's most frightful mascheroni. John Ruskin, the opinionated 19th century authority on Venetian architecture, called it "too foul to be either pictured or described." But after dinner and a Spritz, I quite liked it.
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