Venice and book recommendation

Hello subscribers!

No new blog posts have gone up since last Sunday’s newsletter, BUT: I’ve finally managed to write and upload four brand-new chapters for Venice on to my main website.

The general Venice chapter is by far the longest (the equivalent of 8½ A4 pages); the three subchapters are much briefer. These cover: 1) Cimitero di San Michele, 2) the Venetian Ghetto, and 3) San Servolo.

They all feature elements that may come as a surprise to many readers. For example, did you know that Ezra Pound and Igor Stravinsky are buried in Venice’s main cemetery?

Or did you know that Venice and the Venetian language gave the word ‘ghetto’ to the world? In 1516 the Doge (‘Duke’) of Venice decreed that Jews were allowed to stay in Venice, but had to be confined to a specific area which they were not allowed to leave at night, when the gates were locked and guarded. The dedicated area was called “Gheto Novo”, or “Ghetto Nuovo” in modern Italian spelling. The general word ‘ghetto’ used in English (and other languages) today goes back to that.

Now, the confusing thing is that this “Ghetto Nuovo”, meaning ‘New Ghetto’, is the original, first Jewish ghetto, while the adjacent “Ghetto Vecchio”, or ‘Old Ghetto’, is actually a newer addition. How come? Well, the answer is that the name “gheto novo” predates the Jewish ghetto; it was the name of the island where the Jewish quarter was set up and “geto” (also spelled “ghèto”, or “getto”) meant ‘foundry’, and indeed there was a foundry on the island. So the first ghetto was named after the ‘new foundry’ and it so happened that the extension of the ghetto in the adjacent area was where an ‘old foundry’ had been, hence “Ghetto Vecchio”. That solves the conundrum. The names predate the Jewish ghettos and have nothing to do with which part of the Jewish ghetto came first and which later.

San Servolo is the name of a small island in the Venetian lagoon south of the old city (but part of the Venice municipality). Originally a monastery, then a military hospital, it was from the early 1800s until 1978 used as a psychiatric hospital, or “insane asylum” as the English-language website of today’s museum calls it. Treatment of mental illnesses was in the past frequently random and quite often brutal, including, for instance, “electroshock therapy”. Several of the very disturbing machines used for that are on display in the museum of San Servolo. The picture at the top shows one of them.

The main city of Venice, too, had a few surprises in store for me. For instance, did you know that there have been tornadoes in Venice? A particularly destructive one hit on 11 September (another 9/11!) in 1970, killing 21 people! By chance I happened upon the memorial stone to the victims near the Sant’Elena water-bus stop. Just seeing the words “vittime” and “tornado” and the date I got curious, so later I did some research online and learned about this story. I would never have thought anything like that could happen in Venice. That said, though, just an hour or so after I’d seen the memorial stone, the city was hit by a prolonged violent thunderstorm so that I had to take shelter is a touristy trattoria for a couple of hours. No tornado then, but certainly a sharp contrast to the very hot and sunny weather we’d had all week up to then.

The most constant watery threats to Venice, however, are regular flooding in the winter months (“Acqua alta”) and, especially in the high season: cruise ships. The latter are very unpopular in Venice. All over the city, but especially in the western university districts, you see plenty of posters from the “No Grandi Navi” campaign that wants to ban cruise ships from Venice altogether. I’m fully on their side, I must say. Not only are cruise ships the most environmentally unfriendly mode of travelling and utterly unaesthetic visually, they are also a threat to Venice’s architecture and lagoon, and cause a degree of overtourism that at times spiralled totally out of control. At the same time day trippers from cruise ships don’t spend much money in Venice (except perhaps for a few souvenirs and ice creams or drinks) and thus give very little back to the city. Now measures are being introduced to restrict cruise ship access to Venice. Good! Actually, when I went to Venice in August 2020, it was precisely because there were no cruise ships, thanks to the pandemic. I thought this might be a one-off chance to see Venice without the masses of tourists that normally crowd the place … and indeed it was wonderfully quiet without the usual throngs and just off the main tourist drags my wife and I often had whole piazzas and alleyways all to ourselves.

But so much for Venice – do take a look at the new chapters. There are plenty of nice photos as well.
  

On the PR front for my book Atlas of Dark Destinations, there’s been a very nice recommendation in the newsletter of specialist travel operator Koryo Tours (who I used myself twice, for North Korea and for Turkmenistan). Here is a link to the web version of their latest newsletter – the recommendation of my book is at the bottom, so you have to scroll down.

Koryo Tours, due to the sort of destinations they specialize in, are kind-of “partners in crime” from a dark-tourism perspective, so it was very nice to see them feature my book in this way. There’s a cryptic typo in there (what on Earth is an “ar concept” supposed to be?!?) and I’d slightly object to the expression “esoteric side of tourism” in the context of my book, but never mind. They probably meant “esoteric” in the sense of “unusual” and that’s fine. What neither my book nor my website cover, however, are literally esoteric things such as “paranormal tourism”, “ghost hunts”, “haunted houses” and such like. As I’ve often said, the real world has plenty enough dark things to offer that I see little need for me to go and look for extras elsewhere too. I’ll leave that to those who actually believe in these things and can cover it much better than I’d ever be able to.
  

But so much for this time.

Have a good week.

Best,

Peter