Venice

[Michelangelo] Buonarotti commended it [Titian's painting] highly, saying that his colouring and his style pleased him very much but that it was a shame that in Venice they did not learn to draw well from the beginning.

—Vasari, Giorgio

Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling,Venice lies,ö A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

   Whoever is Lord of Malacca hashishand onthethroat of Venice.

—Tome¤   Pires

   Vedi Napoli, e poi muori? Oui, mais pour voirVenise, mourez d'abord. See Naples and die? Yes, but to seeVenice, die first. '

—Debray, Regis

Veniceislike eating anentireboxofchocolateliqueursin one go.

—Capote,Truman

I stood inVenice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when manya subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, WhereVenice sate in state, thron'd on her hundred isles!

—Rochdale

Venice will linger in your mind†and wherever you go in life you will feel somewhere over your shoulder, a pink, castellated, shimmering presence, the domes and riggings and crooked pinnacles of the Serenissima. There's romance for you! There's the lust and dark wine of Venice! No wonder George Eliot's husband fell into the Grand Canal.

—Morris,Jan formerly James Morris