Today we embark on a formal tour of the grandiose Piazza San Marco and the Basilica it is named after. The unique white domes sit atop the cathedral like strange crowns, and the 15th century mosaics of gold and blue and red take our breaths away. On the roof of the Basilica we get to see the entirety of the Piazza and the neighboring Piazzetta. And When we thought there was no view more beautiful for Venice to offer us, we’re blown away at the top of the Campanile, or bell tower, of San Marco; 323 feet in the air, we are overcome by a sea of red, orange, and terra-cotta roofs as far as the eye can see in one direction, the Mediterranean in the other, as well as the piazza sprung to full life, and packed with hundreds of people looking like ants below.
We break for lunch at an amazing street food spot where we eat Calamari like we’ve never eaten before, and I try the Venetian sour sweet specialty Sarde in Saor. I separate from the group on a mission to try what is rated Venezia’s best Tiramisu at I Tre Mercanti and devour it by a canal where gondolas pass me by.
After a nap I take a boat taxi to the Giardini part of the Biennale where I am floored by Zanele Muholi’s photographs and Frida Orupabo’s investigations of the Black female body. My peers go to see the award-winning Lithuanian pavilion “Sun and Sea (Marina)” in which artists transform an exhibition space into the setting of a beach
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Written by Margaret Groton
Photography by Lauren Peters