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Following only Paris as a city of Romance, Venice is the city that is a necklace of islands wrapped around the neck of the Adriatic sea. Venice has been described by many but she is unique and probably the most famous city in the world. Everyone knows Venice as it has been described and depicted in art and film so often that its image has become part of the European collective consciousness. Just think of the Summertime in Venice with Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi. In fact the first scene of the movie in which Katherine Hepburn arrives in Venice perfectly depicts the emotion one feels and crossing the vast expanse of water by train and arrive at the furthest point one can travel by means other than sea faring. The first impressions of the city are surreal. It seems like a colourful postcard that slowly reveals its shabby decadence. The palaces along the Canal Grande with the water snapping at their hems are picture perfect, Piazza San Marco seems like a theatre backdrop and the panorama across the water from the Palazzo Ducale is exactly as it was painted by Canaletto. Behind all this, however, is the smell of decay aand pollution of a city that is slowly drowning, a beautiful lady ravaged by age and too many good times. The age old discussion focus on the preservation of the city and the constant debacle on how to save the lady from drowning ( 50mm each year) cobine with the debate on how to clean the canals of toxic waste (Katherine Hepburn, during the film, fell into the canal and had an illness which caused her eye to weep for the rest of her life), that inhabitants feed by throwing their waste form the upper storied into the canals. |