Venice - City of Excellence

I have had the immense pleasure of visiting Venice of couple of times, each time in winter. It wasn't as crowded as I hear it gets in the summer months and we were able to move through it fairly easily. The first time was with a fellow Aussie traveller, the second was with a group of students I knew when I was studying in Padova. There were a couple of Italians amongst us, which made the trip even better. Travelling around a country with a native of that country is a really great way to see the real thing. You know, when you're a tourist with Lonely Planet thrust tightly under one arm, phrase book in the other, you miss most of the good bits trying to get to the place where all the tourists are.

When I went with the group of students we wound up in a little cafe that served delicious warm red wine, glorious hot chocolate (thick and bitter - delicious!), sensational antipasto and more. I have no idea what it was called or if I'll ever end up there again. I think it may have been near some water. Down a dark, quiet alley. Hmm....



I remember this was the trip where I tasted salted licorice for the first time (yuck!), made fun of the raucous American students with their fancy cameras around their necks with my Swedish friend Steine and dodged the attentions of an Italian named Zeno who I knew had a Mexican girlfriend.

Anyway, this post isn't just about my more than enjoyable trips to the capital of the Veneto, it's also a look at a book that I have, called Venice Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the renaissance diaries of Marin Sanudo.


Source: The Book Depository

When I discovered this book on Google books last year needless to say I was very excited. One of the things about being a historical writer is finding primary sources that cover the topics pertinent to your story. Sanudo kept his diaries from January 1 1496 to 1533. He tried several times to give away his journal writing, but luckily for us historians, he was convinced otherwise.

Sanudo's work covers an enormously broad range of topics including Venetian government, crime and justice, war and diplomacy, economics, social life, religion and superstition, humanism and the arts, theater and much more.

Sanudo's account of life in Venice during the Renaissance is so comprehensive that for the first time, in all the many and diverse lives of Finding Orpheus I am considering changing the location of my story from Florence to Venice. Sanudo paints such a vivid picture, such inspiring first hand accounts that the information available to a novelist to create a realistic and historically accurate setting is hard to resist.

And Venice too has such a romantic image, being on the islands, with their dark, secret alleyways, the quiet lapping water that holds a myriad of secrets and mysteries. It also stands so close and in such contact with the mysterious and dangerous Ottoman Empire, something that snakes its way into my character's lives.

Who knows Ana and Giovanni may well end up in Venice sometime in the future. The killer that they are facing may lead them there. Or some other circumstance.

For those of you who are interested in the renaissance in Venice though, you can't go past Sanudo's diaries.