Torcello

I never understood the rise of the Venetian school before.

As I read it, I can smell the salt tide creeping up over the lagoon and see the campanile of dear Torcello." And Georgie would put down the tambour on which he was working his copy of an Italian cope and sigh too.

"You are too wonderful," he would say.

"How do you find the time for everything?" She rejoined with the apothegm that made the rounds of Risolm the next day.

Even though the islands are only a few miles offshore, the Lombards don't have the naval technology to conquer them, or, as far as we can tell, any interest in trying.

The foundation stone of the Church on Torcello, one of the earliest island settlements, tells us that it was built in the late 630s, and there was already a functioning local government structure in the area under the leadership of the Byzantine exarch, or governor of Ravenna.

So the Venetian community first comes into being as one of the Italian outposts of the Eastern Roman Empire, based in Constantinople.

But the grip of that Byzantine Empire on Northern Italy starts to weaken in the early 700s.

I can't remember which one.

I feel like is that the Torcello?

That might be.

Because that one

Tomorrow, I'm going to explore the lagoon islands.

I wanna see the glassblowers on Murano and maybe make it out to the tiny, quiet island of Torcello, which I'm told feels like a place out of time.

There's also the Biennale art exhibition to see before it gets too crowded.

And of course, the Regata Storica is coming up next Sunday, which is apparently a sight to behold.

I've heard the queues can be long, so I'll book my ticket online tonight, and I'll go early.

And then I wanna get out into the lagoon to Murano and Burano and maybe Torcello and definitely Sant'Erasmo, the farm island, which I'm told is the green lung of the lagoon, where they grow the artichokes.

I wanna see the city beyond the tourist core, the parts where people actually live, and the parts where they used to.

I wanna understand how it works, the tides, the vaporetti, the whole machine.

The lagoon is one of my favorite parts of the entire area.

Venice is the one major island, but they've got Murano, and Burano, and Torcello, And Lido and a bunch of other places, like the Lido, for instance, 15 minutes by ferry, and you're on the Lido out of this old Renaissance-type city, and you're on the Lido, and it's like you just landed in California.

All of a sudden, everybody's on bikes and flip-flops and going to the beach.

And so you have that right there also, the two completely different worlds that so many people miss.

He finds gondolas waiting all day long within call of the concierge of his hotel, or perhaps, with self-congratulatory foresight, he has engaged a particular gondolier by the week.

For the longer trips to Torcello, Murano, or Chioggia, he arranges that his gondolier shall deposit him at the place where the steamboat starts.

Possibly in rare moments when the instinct of economy gets the better of him, he may occasionally take the tram steamer to the Lido or up to the Grand Canal.

Only in the piazza and its purlieus does he condescend to set foot to ground, except where his gondola lands him, by grace of the rampino, the chartered libertine of an old man with a boat hook, who claims to earn a halfpenny more or less at every disembarkation.

The expanse of protected water, estimated, says Mr. Horatio Brown, to cover a surface of no less than one hundred and sixty geographical miles, contains numberless points of interest.

There are not a few islands specially worth visiting for their picturesqueness or for their historical associations.

To the north and east of Venice proper there spreads out a long train of islands, of which the first is San Michele, the cemetery, and the last Torcello, with its very ancient basilica, once the mother church of Venice.

Between these lie Murano and Burano.