Venice: Intermezzo of Canals

Venice is unique because of its liquid setting, where Byzantine domes and late Gothic palazzos dematerialize in a multicolored mist. My focus in Venice has always been St. Mark’s: the four horses, the Palo d’Oro. It is the pageant that Shakespeare writes of at the end of “The Tempest,” and it ebbs and flows in the recesses of my mind: in broken tesserae, marble, molten glass and gold.