By Christine Cordi

I don’t know about the rest of you waterlogged commuters, but sometimes I like to play a little game. Especially during the unending grayness of winter. Those days make you wonder if we will ever see spring or if we are condemned to continue on in the cold, wet, unlit present, anxious about getting enough therms to heat our homes.

My perfectly legal game is called "Instant Transportation". So far it appears to be beyond the capabilities of modern ferry transit, but give it time. I step aboard the ferry in Larkspur and when I disembark in San Francisco I’m actually in ____ (fill in the blank, but it has to be near water and have nothing to do with work) on a warm, sunny day. I begin by inhaling deeply a few times, as I smell the seaweed and briny water. Perhaps I hear a bell toll. I stare at a small quadrant of the San Francisco Ferry Building with manicured potted trees covering arched windows and ecco; I am instantly transported to –Venice.

I can imagine it now. What a glorious day! Just a few errant wisps of clouds mar the blue Venetian sky as we pull away from the dock on our Venetian ferry ("vaporetto"). It is easy to see how the magnificent colors and limpid light inspired Venetian painters like Titian and Tintoretto. What is amazing for a Californian to realize is that the views of the Grand Canal have not changed tremendously since their times. In Venice, the present always seems to be inextricably bound with the past.

We’re seated outside so we can witness the pageant of palaces lining the canal as we snake our way through the heart of the city. Each dwelling ("palazzo") has its own tales that join with others to weave a rich yet peculiar historical tapestry. This unlikely place gave rise to a republic lasting one thousand years.

Most of the palazzi were built by wealthy merchants in the 1400-1500’s, yet quite a number were constructed almost 900 years ago. Famous artists, such as Tintoretto and Tiepoli, once painted frescoes on external palazzo walls, while others were heavily adorned, one even with gold. Many have pointed arch windows and other Byzantine influences, along with marble walls, lacy, filigreed balconies, and rosettes. There are healthy and vibrant looking ones decorated with festooning gardens, while others appear neglected and worn under the harsh, midday sun. Only the kinder, oblique rays of the setting sun can soften their aged appearance. (Ah yes, romantic lighting works for buildings too.) And still others, innocent and lovely looking on the outside, have brought bad luck to their successive owners with strings of murder/suicides. But each one has its own signature against the sky, its unique tilt, as it rubs shoulders with its brethren and settles deeper into the silent, muddy ooze below.

Long ago the Venetians found a way to build grandly on their small islands of marsh, mosquitoes, and beach grass. They drove wooden piles, some one hundred feet in length, into the subsoil. The massive congregation of piles provided sufficient support for the weight of the stone structures above. For instance, there are more than one million piles under the tiled floors of Santa Maria della Salute Church, near the end of the Grand Canal and built to commemorate the end of the plague in the 1600’s. Due to Venice’s strong appetite for timber, generally imported from the Istrian coast (Yugoslavia), Goethe called it the "Beaver Republic".

Our vaporetto now passes the Dogana, or customs house at the fork with the Giudecca Canal. We look across to the splendid Doge’s Palace, constructed around 1200, shining in the sun. This historic seat of government with its delicate pink rectangular patterned walls floating above masses of columns was called the "Central Building of the World", no less, by the famous 19th Century British art historian, John Ruskin. (Many British read his book in which he made this proclamation, and ever since, they have descended in hordes upon Venice.) Yet, as with some of the palazzi, the lightness of the palace’s exterior hid some centuries old dark and nefarious deeds. These were performed or ordered by the Council of Ten and others such as the Three Inquisitors, in the palace’s hidden torture chambers and elsewhere. There were state secrets and other matters of economic importance they felt they had to protect – at any costs. As one example, glassmakers could not leave the old Republic for fear of death.

As we go further out into the lagoon, we see the stately lion’s gate of the Arsenal, another top secret place. The Arsenal (from the Arabic) shipyard complex employed over 16,000 workers during its heyday and was the largest in the world. Somehow the inventive, commercially minded Venetians could turn out a galley in a single day. Not bad in any time, but particularly impressive starting in the year 1104. One later famous visitor to the Arsenal was Dante, who echoed some of what he witnessed in his Inferno.

Continuing further we come to the verdant Public Gardens at the end of the island, organized by Napoleon. And it did indeed all end with Napoleon. The 28 year-old conquered the once majestic Venetian Republic in 1797. At that point Venice’s history took yet another zig-zag turn, like one of its canals. It continued through the centuries, and somehow, against all the odds, and to our delight, it has survived.