Strolling through Venice: The Definitive Walking Guidebook to 'La Serenissima' | 
 enlarge | Author: John Freely
Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 212675
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.3
ISBN: 1845115783
Dewey Decimal Number: 914
EAN: 9781845115784
ASIN: 1845115783
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
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Product Description
There is perhaps no other European city quite as romantic, as exquisitely beautiful or as enigmatic as Venice. ‘La Serenissima’ floats on a hundred islets in a crescent-shaped lagoon, ribboned with canals, its labyrinth shadowed with ghosts of the past. This seemingly fragile city was the birthplace and inspiration for some of the greatest artists in history and was also, for a thousand years, the strongest sea-faring and mercantile power in the world. In Strolling Through Venice, John Freely brings Venice – her past and her present – alive.
Beginning at Piazza San Marco, Freely guides the reader on a series of carefully planned and unique walks radiating from the iconic Grand Canal into each of the city’s sestieri. Through streets and squares, along canals, into churches, galleries, museums and palazzi; every major place of interest that the visitor could hope to see is illuminated. At each spot Freely peels back the layers of history to reveal the stories of Venice. Practical and informative, richly coloured and bursting with history, myth and legend, Strolling Through Venice is the perfect guide for anyone who has fallen under the spell of this most enchanting city.
Book Description
Beginning at Piazza San Marco, John Freely guides the reader on a series of carefully planned and unique walks radiating from the iconic Grand Canal into each of the city's sestieri. Through streets and squares, along canals, into churches, galleries, museums and palazzi; every major place of interest that the visitor could hope to see is illuminated. At each spot Freely peels back the layers of history to reveal the stories of Venice. Practical and informative, richly coloured and bursting with history, myth and legend, Strolling Through Venice is the perfect guide for anyone who has fallen under the spell of this most enchanting city.
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| Customer Reviews:
Very usefull June 9, 2008
I am planning my holidays to Venice and I found the book very interesting.
In a city were you can do all your visits on foot is very usefull a guide so detailed and easy to read. I am sure that following it I will not miss anything!!
 Venice in footnotes June 2, 2008
This is an appalling book - worth recommending primarily as a strange kind of scholastic conceit and not without its attraction. But it can feel like a computer data dump.
Imagine you had a guide to the Metropolitan Museum that just reprinted the wall tags. It told you where the pictures were, who painted them, what the titles were, when they were done, and possibly included a note about something else - usually like who the patron was. But it didn't show you the pictures or often tell you why they were interesting or important. And didn't put anything in historical or social or any other kind of perspective. And had no narrative/story-telling abilities. That's what this book does for Venice.
Here is a representative paragraph, in its entirety, from chapter 3, The
Basilica of San Marco:
"In the lunette above above the door at the end of the transept there is a 13C mosaic portrait of St Mark. The tympanum wall has a superb Gothic rose window of the 15C. The soffit of the arch that springs from double columns on either side of the niche has mosaics of Sts Anthony, Bernadino, Vincent and Paul the Hermit, all mid 15C."
That is the tone of the book, although there is usually more Italian. (The default position on naming is Italian. For instance, the raised well-heads that are part of Venice are all noted as "vera da pozzo," and it seems like each one encountered as part of the strolling must have its attributes documented, rather like it was a church.) A huge amount of work went into this book - the dates for all the well-heads seem to be provided - and it probably killed off a proofreader or two.
The concept of the book is to provide a walking guide to Venice. It's a walking guide made up primarily of historical footnotes.
Even here, the book as a physical object fails the idea.
It is entirely b&w save the cover. In the ca. 400 page guidebook, there are 16 pages of grayish photos - the sort associated with books of the 1930's maybe. Elaborate descriptions in the book aren't connected to a photo.
The idea of this book - although in my mind the practicalities are not made sufficiently clear from the outset - is that you use it to take various guided walks through the city. The walks are numbered, and there is a series of maps in the back of the book which provide dotted lines and arrows to follow. Problem is: the walks are chopped up into different maps. The maps are small - there are 20 sections in the overview - broken up to fit the book which is a slightly undersized trade paperback. Meaning you'd likely need to carry a magnifying glass. The walks overlap, the whole mess is done in variations on gray, and heaven help you if you actually want to follow the dotted line in the Castello, for instance. There should have been separate maps for each walk, and they should have appeared either in front of or behind the description of the walk.
Look at this book in a library before buying it. If you want a guide, buy a guidebook (this isn't one). If you have 4+ histories on Venice already, take the plunge.
 Essential to my enjoyment of Venice August 2, 1999
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I would encourage anyone planning a trip to Venice to try and get a copy of this book. Unlike the ordinary travel "dictionaries" which exhaustively catalog restaurants, hotels, and "must see" sites, but ultimately leave you on your own when it comes to making key decisions on how to best "attack" a place as overwhelming as Venice, this provides a strong point of view on how best to enjoy Venice. Additionally, the historical commentary and insite provide the necessary depth to understand this enchanting city, without becoming an academic tome. I am forever grateful to the companion who sent me their copy of this book. My only regret, as I now live in and am avidly exploring Italy, that Mr. Freely has apparently devoted the bulk of his writing to Istanbul and not provided readers the opportunity to view other Italian cities through his eyes.
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