Beyond Borders

Getting There and Around
There are nonstop flights to Venice from New York, Philadelphia, and
Atlanta. Otherwise, you’ll have to make connections through Milan
or Rome. Once there, you can travel by ferry, water taxi, or bus.
The city of Venice, Italy.
Piazza San Marco
room covered in vermilion damask
and hung with portraits of Arrivabene
ancestors.
For anyone who’s been paying
even perfunctory attention to Venice’s
evolution over the past several years, a
slick, Asian-based hotel group taking
over the Palazzo Papadopoli makes
perfect sense. It’s a pivotal moment here
right now: at one end of the tourist
profile are the rarefied spectacles of the
Biennale and the Venice Film Festival,
which see the Guidecca
Canal grow thicker every
year with super-yachts,
and certain quarters of
the city teeming with
VIP’s from Beverly Hills
and Basel, Kazakhstan
and Kuala Lumpur. This
year’s Biennale is the
biggest to date, with 88
countries exhibiting.
Luxury hoteliers have responded,
establishing presences (as in Aman’s
case); debuting new properties (like
“
The future, here,
is as much in the
hands of those who
visit as of those
who call it home.
Francesca Bortolotto Possati, the
Venetian-born owner of the venerated
Bauers hotels, with the exclusive Villa
F); or upping their game with ambitious
multimillion-dollar renovations (among
them the venerated Gritti Palace
and the Hotel Danieli, both flying
Starwood’s Luxury Collection flag).
A
t the other end is a less
glamorous, more worrisome
phenomenon: the thousands
in the Piazza San Marco and on the
Riva dei Schiavoni jostling for their
photo of the Bridge of Sighs to post to
“
photo credits: pixabay.com
Pinterest (or, increasingly, Weibo). Most
are day-tripping cruise passengers and
tour groups, and their numbers increase
by an alarming amount each year. Fears
that this demographic doesn’t spend
enough to compensate for the damage
their aggregate droves are doing to
historic Venice—flood-prone; weak of
foundation; as physically vulnerable as a
metropolis can be—are growing.
This is why the future, here, is as
much in the hands of those who visit
as of those who call it home. Between
the art diva and the day-tripper, there
is room—indeed, there’s the need—for
the tourist who partakes of another
Venice: the living city that hums with
modern culture, local artisanal cuisine,
craftspeople keeping traditions alive,
and authentic neighborhoods.
For though its geographic nature
is finite, Venice still allows
for felicitous accidents of
discovery—and even, surprisingly, of
solitude, despite a daily tourist influx in
the Centro Storico that outnumbers the
actual population. You can, for instance,
carve a route through the labyrinth
of calli radiating east from the Doge’s
Palace, and within 15 minutes be in
Castello, the once mariner-class sestiere
that surrounds the Arsenale. Its lowrise
houses and tiny squares are humbly
pretty, strung with laundry pirouetting
Stay
Aman Canal Grande 1364
Calle Tiepolo; amanresorts.
com. $$$$$
Oltre Il Giardino A sixroom
contemporary gem
in quiet San Polo. 2542 San
Polo; oltreilgiardino-venezia.
com. $$
Venissa Ristorante Ostello
On the island of Mazzorbo,
this stylish inn has a
Michelin-starred restaurant.
3 Fondamenta Caterina;
venissa.it. $
Eat
in the Adriatic breeze. Masterworks by
the schools of Tintoretto, Bellini, and
Veronese are casually sequestered in
churches and chapels like multi-carat
gemstones scattered across garden soil.
In the Via Garibaldi, you can stop
for a tiny tramezzino of baccalà and
artichoke purée at Bar Mio, or stroll
down to Serra dei Giardini, a hybrid
café-nursery-event space, for a glass
of Ribolla Gialla or a freshly blended
vegetable juice.
Similarly, over by the Rialto Bridge
and market—brimming sometimes
joyfully, sometimes claustrophobically,
with life—a handful of strategic turns
will take you deep into the quietude of
San Polo. Here, if your map (and/or the
directions from your hotel’s concierge)
has served you well, you’ll reach Antiche
Carampane, where diners convene
under rustic beams and lighting that’s
just a shade too bright, tucking in to
soft-shell crabs (sublime, when in
Alle Testiere 5801 Castello;
osterialletestiere.it. $$$
Antiche Carampane 1911
San Polo; antichecarampane.
com. $$$
Bar Mio 1820 Via Garibaldi;
39-041/521-1361.
CoVino 3829A-3829
Castello; covinovenezia.
com. $$$
Il Ridotto 4509 Castello;
ilridotto.com. $$$
Do
Fondazione Giorgio Cini
864 Dorsoduro; cini.it.
Fondazione Prada
2215 Santa Croce;
fondazioneprada.org.
Fondazione Querini
Stampalia 5252 Castello;
querinistampalia.org.
Palazzo Grassi Campo San
Samuele; palazzograssi.it.
Hotels
$ Less than $200
$$ $200-$350
$$$ $350-$500
$$$$ $500-$1K
$$$$$ >$1K
Restaurants
$ Less than $25
$$ $25-$75
$$$ $75-$150
$$$$ >$150
season, in late spring and early fall)
and a signature berry pavlova (deadly
delicious, year-round). Antiche
Carampane shares an ethos of local
products and traditional preparation
with a handful of other restaurants,
recently gathered into a loose
official alliance known as La Buona
Accoglienza (“the warm welcome”).
They include some of the city’s all-stars,
such as tiny Alle Testiere, with its fish
dressed with tender violet Sant’Erasmo
artichokes or tart radicchio from organic
allotments on the island of Vignole.
And also Al Covo, whose Italo-
American owners, Diane Rankin and
Cesare Benelli, have just opened a new
bacaro, CoVino, where you can sample
what they call terroir dining: small
courses from all small-scale producers,
. . . Continued on page 95
Left to Right: St. Mark’s Square; Venice
Farmer’s Market; the Rialto Bridge;
Restaurant along the Venice canal.
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BEYOND BORDERS | September 2017