Venice Journal: San Giorgio Maggiore

"Doorway San Giorgio," drawing by Hallie Cohen

You have to keep waking yourself up, convincing yourself it’s not a   Hollywood movie. You turn into Zattere on the Grand Canal and up the steps of a small bridge, the Ponte agli Incurabili, passing a plaque commemorating "Bodskij Iosif (1940-1996), grande poete rosso, premio Nobel, amo e canto questo luogo." You come to the pink Pensione Calcina with its waterside café. On that facade is written “John Ruskin abito questo casa 1877" and further along, “Andre Suares, scrittore, saggista, critica e uomo di lettere soggiorno in questa casa nel novembre l902." You take the vaporreto at the Zattere stop and get off in front of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its unmistakably Palladian exterior. Walking through the church to see Tintoretto’s “Last Supper," you remark on the diagonal composition and how angled it is in comparison to the da Vinci. You then ascend the elevator to the Campanile, the belltower, perhaps reminded of the famous scene from Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Here you retrace your steps from the air as you look over San Marco. Then onwards to the Vatican Chapels, the architectural installations by Norman Foster and others. On this spit of land facing the Cipriani hotel, you enter a succession of spiritual spaces in which the massive inundation of crickets outside competes with the chatter in your head.