‘The fast-gaining waves … beat, like passing bells, against the Stones of Venice’

Tourists on the duck walks in Saint Mark's Square … is Venice drowning under a sea of tourists (Photograph: Patrick Comerford; click on images for full-screen views)

Patrick Comerford

The success of the Wild Atlantic Way, and new plans to attract 175,000 Chinese tourists a year to Ireland show how proud Irish people are in our tourism sector. Tourism was almost non-existent until the 1960s, but today it accounts for just over 10% of global GDP. With cheap flights and increased disposable income, tourists are proving impossible to keep away.

Tourism promotes Ireland as a country, raises awareness of Irish culture, wins Ireland friends on the international stage, and is a major source of foreign revenue. On the other hand, many Italians now resent the place of tourism in their economy and the presence of tourists in their cities.

The Duomo in Florence … Italy is the fifth most-visited country in the world, and with 52.4 million tourists a year it can no longer cope (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Last month, in an effort to stem the rising tide of visitors, Venice announced a plan to charge a €10 entrance tax for day-trippers, and the Mayor of Florence is considering something similar. Two years ago, the Cinque Terre region in Liguria introduced a ticketing system to limit the number of tourists to 1.5 million a year.

Victim of its own success?

The Cinque Terre region in Liguria has introduced a ticketing system to limit the number of tourists to 1.5 million a year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In an effort to stem the rising tide of visitors, Venice plans to charge day-trippers a €10 entrance tax (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Perhaps Italy is a victim of its own success – it is the fifth most-visited country in the world, and with 52.4 million tourists a year it can no longer cope. But the problem is not just numbers. Many people also resent the crass superficiality of visitors who wander around with selfie sticks, as keen to see themselves in a city as to see the city itself.

The scorn for tourists has been created by environmental damage caused by the growing number of cheap flights, the increased popularity of cruise ships and the damage caused by litter, erosion, vandalism, congestion, pollution and climate change. This scorn becomes a lethal cocktail with the added ingredients of racism and xenophobia introduced by far-right activities, so that foreigners, tourists, migrants, immigrants and refugees are all put together in the minds of the mindless.

Tourists, for their part, often feel welcome only because they are cash cows. There are regular reports of tourists claiming they have been overcharged for a coffee in Saint Mark’s Square and signs throughout Venice warn them against eating in public.

Mobile barriers to withstand exceptional flooding are expected to be in place in Venice by 2021 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The new Venetian tax is less likely to cut tourist numbers and more likely to increase the resentment among tourists who feel exploited and welcome only for their money. Indeed, turnstiles at the city gates may only increase the impression that Venice is just one more large theme park rather than a living city, with real-life inhabitants and pressing problems that need sympathy as well as money in the search for a solution.

Sunset at Santa Maria della Salute … the base rate for flooding in Venice was established in 1871 at the Punta della Salute Observatory (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Rising sea levels

A study by Kiel University shows projected sea-level rises for the Mediterranean may affect the 49 Unesco World Heritage sites. The most threatened are on the Adriatic coast: Venice, Aquileia, Ravenna and Ferrara, followed by the episcopal complex at Porec in Croatia. The list also includes coastal sites in Tunisia such as the Medina of Tunis, Carthage and Sabratha, as well the Amalfi coast, the Roman city of Arles, the Greek temples south of Naples, the crusader city of Acre, ancient Ephesus and Tel Aviv.

According to the study, published in the journal Nature, the highest number of sites at risk is in Italy (14), followed by Croatia (7) and Greece (4). In addition, almost all the Aegean coast of Turkey with its important Hellenistic sites is also in the higher risk range.

However, turning knowledge into effective action is a lengthy and fraught process, as shown by the long-delayed and incomplete actions of the Italian government to protect the city of Venice.

High waters in the Lagoon at Torcello … erosion is caused by the lagoon losing sediment into the Adriatic with every low tide (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Venice floods frequently, sometimes to considerable depth. Flooding begins at 80 cm, and shortly before I visited late last year, the water level reached 156 cm above the base rate established in 1871 at the Punta della Salute Observatory.

The report puts Venice in the highest risk category because of both erosion and sea-level rises, with storm surges of up to 2.5 metres projected by 2100. Erosion is caused by the lagoon losing sediment into the Adriatic with every low tide, while the water level in the city is already 30 cm higher than in 1871.

The report says Venice will be protected by mobile barriers intended to withstand an exceptional flooding event of up to 3 metres. They are expected to be in place in 2021, but even then they are 10 years late. Nor can they save Venice from the chronic rise in sea-levels that will lead to flooding at every high tide by the end of the 21st century unless the barriers are kept almost permanently closed – and this, in turn, will cause serious pollution in the Lagoon.

A gondola with tourists passes the Palazzo Contarini Fasan (left), said to have been the home of Desdemona (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

More tourists, fewer residents

Meanwhile, Venice is drowning. For days before my visit last November, daily news reports showed Saint Mark’s Square covered in high waters, with tourists using duck walks or wading through the acqua alta up to their hips or even up to their waists in water.

The Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, has proposed a cap on day-trippers. Before the summer season began last year, crowd-control gates were installed at pinch-points in May to control the flow of tourists. When the crowds got too large, police closed the main entrances, limiting access to local residents and workers with a special pass.

Saint Mark’s Basilica … Venice has always been a popular destination, even before the ‘Grand Tours’ of the 18th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today, there are more tourists and fewer residents in Venice, making many wonder whether Venice is in danger of drowning, not just under the waters of the Adriatic but under the flood of visitors who rise in numbers year after year.

In a recent feature on tourism headed ‘Wish you weren’t here,’ the Economist recalled a study in 1988 that found Venice could hold at most 20,750 visitors a day – a figure that is about a quarter of tourist traffic 30 years later. Yet the increased demand has not been met by building better public transport.

Venice has lost more than half its population in the past 50 years. Those who stay are left wondering how they can fight to reclaim and preserve their city. The resident population has dropped below 55,000 as Venetians find themselves priced out of their home city. If Venice is in danger of sinking, then it is in more imminent danger of shrinking.

Venice has always been a popular destination, even before the ‘Grand Tours’ of the 18th century. Ever since the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, local people have complained that Venice is being overrun by visitors. Napoleon wanted to own Venice, and ever since the Victorian era writers and artists have sought inspiration – and romance – in its waters and in its architecture.

But the city is groaning under the weight of tourism and in recent years tension has grown between visitors and local people, who fear their city is becoming just another Disneyland.

Ryanair, ‘selfies’ to post on Facebook and Instagram, cheap flights, and towering cruise ships now mean that on any given day that there are more visitors than residents in Venice. But the majority of visitors are day-trippers, and few stay overnight in the city. This means most of them spend their time and their money in the same small areas.

Venice is a timeless city where no one has any real time for her (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

No time for a timeless city

Venice is a timeless city where no one has any real time for her. Many of the 30 million visitors a year are grab-and-go day-trippers, who seldom venture off the tourist trail to explore side streets and quieter piazzas.

Venice is dwindling away. Around 1,000 residents move to the mainland every year, unable to afford rising rent demands, pushed to find employment outside tourism, or unwilling to live in a city that is losing a sense of community.

Angry local people recently plastered Venice with graffiti and flyers that scream out, ‘Tourists Go Home!’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Small businesses and local shops are being replaced by souvenir stalls with cheap imports and fast food restaurants to cater for the day-trippers who prefer to munch rather than lunch and who are gone once darkness begins to fall.

It is all too easy for me to descend into snobbery about other tourists. I like to think that I have visited Venice because of my cultural tastes, including architecture, history, Byzantine churches and palaces, its influence on shaping the cultural identity of Europe today.

The Ponte Vecchio in Florence … the Mayor of Florence is considering entrance tax for day-trippers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I had been to Venice on three or four day-trips in the past before staying for the best part of the week late last year. I watched dismissively what I could too easily see as hordes who had been disgorged from coaches and cruise liners early in the morning, follow the coloured umbrellas and flags from San Marco to Rialto, stopping only to buy cheap Chinese-made reproduction masks, and then leave in the early evening, imagining someone is going to switch off the lights when they leave.

But why should the music of Vivaldi, the architectural musings of Ruskin and an interest in Byzantine art and history make my visits more culturally acceptable than the group of young women from northern Europe who want to enjoy a hens’ weekend in Venice or the young men who have come for a stag night or a football match?

Traditional crafts, small businesses and local restaurants are being squeezed out of business in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Day-trippers are important in any society. They go home with positive impressions, many want to read and learn more, and some will return.

On a recent visit to Tangier, I realised that for many in the group it was their first encounter with a Muslim-majority or Arabic-speaking society. I had no doubts that they would return home with different attitudes, and perhaps even return to Morocco for a longer visit.

Day-trippers seldom venture off the tourist trail to explore side streets and quieter piazzas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

However, in Venice frustration with visitors has grown to the point that last summer angry locals plastered the city with graffiti and flyers that scream out, ‘Tourists Go Home!’ Venice is dwindling away: around 1,000 residents move to the mainland every year, unable to afford rising rents, pushed to find employment outside tourism, or unwilling to live in a city that is losing a sense of community.

Recent measures introduced to control tourism and protect the city include bans on new hotels and takeaway food joints in the historic centre. But Unesco’s concerns about cruise ships, mass tourism and damage to the fragile lagoon ecosystem have been met with empty promises and no concrete proposals.

The Grand Canal seen from under Rialto Bridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Tourism could be the problem, but it could also be a solution, not only keeping businesses alive but also making people aware of the crises that Venice faces and that must be addressed if Venice is to be saved.

In the 1850s, John Ruskin warned that Venice was being so abused and neglected that it would eventually melt into the lagoon ‘like a lump of sugar in hot tea.’ In an alarm signal that is still resonant, he heard ‘the fast-gaining waves … beat, like passing bells, against the Stones of Venice.’

Vivienne Westwood once asked: ‘If we can’t save Venice, how do we save the world?’

John Ruskin once said ‘The Ducal Palace of Venice … is the central building of the world’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This feature was first published in February 2019 in the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) and the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory)

An old Cold War frontier has fallen but continues to tell a story of division

The railway station at the Slovenian side of Europa Square, the crossing point between Italy and Slovenia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

I have visited many divided cities: Nicosia in Cyprus remains Europe’s only divided capital; Berlin has been reunited, but I was still conscious recently of where the border once ran between east and west when I visited the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie; and Strabane in Co Tyrone and Lifford in Co Donegal, are really one town, as are Blacklion in Co Cavan and Belcoo in Co Fermanagh, but they are divided between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Recently, I visited the divided town of Gorizia, both Gorizia and Nova Gorica, crossing the border between Italy and Slovenia a number of times, arriving and leaving from one railway station in Italy, and having lunch in another in Slovenia.

It might be just too easy to compare the once divided Gorizia with Berlin during the Cold War. But even at the height of the Cold War, Yugoslavia was nonaligned, and Italy and Yugoslavia shared many cultural and sporting events until 1991.

A crossing point that has become a matter of curiosity since the end of the Cold War and became possible with the Schengen Agreement (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The frontier dividing Gorizia remained in place until Slovenia became part of the Schengen Agreement on 21 December 2007.

Today, the border between Italy and Slovenia is almost invisible, an artificial line that runs between Gorizia in Italy and Nova Gorica in Slovenia. The most celebrated border crossing is at Europa Square, an open pedestrian square in front of the Transalpina railway station. But there are other border crossings between Gorizia and Nova Gorica, for the border is a straight line that ignores the natural contours and bends in the streets and buildings, still seen in the remains of a fence that once ran across streets and even divided gardens.

The old border fence divided houses from their gardens and streets (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A colourful past

Gorizia is at the foot of the Julian Alps and just two hours by train from Venice. Over the centuries, it has been ruled by the Romans, the Holy Roman Empire, the Venetians, the Habsburgs of Austria, and was a place of refuge for the exiled Bourbon family when they lost their throne in France.

Gorizia stands where the Isonzo and Vipava valleys meet, in a plane overlooked by the Gorizia Hills. Its name comes from the Slovene word gorica, meaning ‘little hill.’ The town first emerged as a watchtower controlling a crossing on the River Isonzo, and was a village near Via Gemina, the Roman road linking Aquileia and Emona, or present-day Ljubljana.

Gorizia grew up beneath the slopes of the mediaeval castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The name Gorizia is first recorded in 1001, when the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III granted the castle and village of Goriza to John II, Patriarch of Aquileia, and Count Verihen Eppenstein of Friuli. By 1127, Count Meinhard was calling himself Graf von Görz. From the 12th to the early 16th century, the town was the centre of an independent county, with a village around the upper castle district and a lower village.

The family of the Counts of Gorizia died out in 1500, when Leonardo, the last Count of Gorizia died in 1500, and was buried in the church that would become the cathedral.

Strolling through the side streets of Gorizia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

After a short period of rule from Venice in 1508-1509, Gorizia came under the Austrian Habsburgs. Under the Habsburgs, the town spread out below the castle, and many people moved there from neighbouring parts of northern Italy. Gorizia quickly became a multi-ethnic town where Friulian, Venetian, German and Slovene were spoken.

A cathedral for Prince-Bishops

The neoclassical façade of Gorizia Cathedral dates from the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The cathedral or duomo, behind Piazza Cavour, dedicated to Saint Hilary (Ilario) and Saint Tatian (Taziano) dates from 1296 and the first reference to the church is in 1342. The church was enlarged at the end of the 14th century, and a new Gothic building was finished in 1525.

During extensive rebuilding in 1688-1702, the Gothic nave was replaced by a Baroque church with a nave and two side aisles, galleries and a choir and organ loft. The neoclassical façade dates from the 19th century.

The baroque interior of Gorizia Cathedral replaced an earlier Gothic design (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The 17th-century interior has with rich baroque decorations, 17th and 18th century altars, an 18th-century decorated pulpit, and the tomb of Count Leonardo, who died in 1500. The altarpiece in the apse by Giuseppe Tominz (1825) depicts the Virgin Mary with Saint Hilary and Saint Tatian.

At the end of the right aisle, the Gothic Chapel of Sant’Acazio, built by the Counts of Gorizia, was incorporated into the cathedral in the early 1400s. The elegant angels depicted as musicians on the ceiling date back from the mid-15th and early 16th century.

During the Reformation, the prominent Slovene preacher Primož Trubar visited and preached in Gorizia. By the end of the 16th century, however, the Catholic Counter-Reformation had gained force in Gorizia.

In a side aisle in Gorizia Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

When the Patriarchate of Aquileia was abolished in 1751, the Archdiocese of Gorizia was formed in Habsburg territory, with suffragan dioceses in Trieste, Trento, Como and Pedena. A new town developed around the cathedral, many new baroque villas were built, and a new synagogue symbolised the multi-ethnic, tolerant life in the town.

The Church of Saint Hilary and Saint Tatian became the cathedral of Gorizia in 1751, and from 1766, the archbishops were also Princes of the Holy Roman Empire. The new diocese was suppressed in 1788 but was restored in 1797 and had an archbishop once again from 1830.

Churches and palaces

The former Franciscan cloisters and the Church of Saint Anthony in Piazza Sant’Antonio (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Close to the cathedral, Piazza Sant’Antonio is lined on three sides by airy colonnades that were once part of the cloister of a Franciscan convent founded in the 13th century by Saint Anthony of Padua.

On the square, the Palazzo dei Baroni Lantieri dates from the Middle Ages. The oldest part is the 13th-century tower with a drawbridge, part of the city walls later incorporated into the Schönhaus (‘La casa bella’), home of the Counts of Gorizia. The guests in the past included Pope Pius VI, Napoleon, Casanova and the playwright Carlo Goldoni.

A café in the colonnades at Piazza Sant’Antonio (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

On the same square, the Palazzo dei Conti Strassoldo, now a hotel, was the home from 1836 of the exiled French Bordon monarchs, Charles X and Louis XIX, who lived here as the Duke of Angoulême.

The Casa Torriana and the Fountain of Neptune in Piazza della Vittoria (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The largest square in Gorizia is the Piazza della Vittoria (Victory Square). Here, the Casa Torriana, dating from the 16th-century, is now the seat of the prefecture or local government. Giacomo Casanova who stayed here in 1773 and describes his sojourn in Gorizia in his Memories.

In the centre of the square, the Fountain of Neptune (1700) is the work of Marco Chiereghin of Padua, and the Column of Saint Ignatius was donated by Count Andrea di Porcia in 1687.

The façade of Saint Ignatius Church, built by the Jesuits in 1654-1747 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The piazza is dominated by Saint Ignatius Church, built by the Jesuits between 1654 and 1747. The imposing façade is the work of the Austrian Jesuit Christoph Tausch. Three niches hold statues of Saint John the Baptist, Saint Ignatius and Saint Joseph, and the two bell towers are surmounted by two bronze onion domes.

The church was rebuilt in the 1760s and was consecrated by Karl Michael von Attems, Prince-Archbishop of Gorizia, in 1769. However, the church was destroyed 23 years later when war broke out between Austria and France and many of its original treasures were stolen.

Wars and divisions

Approaching Slovenia from Italy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

During the Napoleonic era, Gorizia was under French rule in 1809-1813. After the restoration of the Austrian rule, Gorizia became a popular summer residence for the Austrian nobility and was known as the ‘Austrian Nice.’ When the French Bourbons were deposed in 1830, the last Bourbon king, Charles X, moved to Gorizia.

In mid-19th century, Gorizia had regional autonomy and was a multi-ethnic and tolerant town, with a flourishing cultural life and Italian, Venetian, Slovene, Friulian and German were all spoken in the streets.

On the eve of World War I, Gorizia had about 31,000 residents, with another 14,000 people in the suburbs.

The first victim of World War I in Gorizia was Countess Lucy Christalnigg, who was shot on 10 August 1914 while driving her car on a mission for the Austrian Red Cross. Italy entered World War I on 24 May 1915, and the hills west of Gorizia soon became the location of fighting between Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops.

Most of the inhabitants of Gorizia were evacuated by early 1916, the Italian army captured Gorizia in August 1916, but the town returned to Austro-Hungarian control at the end of 1917.

At the end of World War I, Gorizia was occupied by Italian troops again in early November 1918, and in 1927 Gorizia became a provincial capital.

With the rise of Fascism, many Slovenes fled Gorizia to Yugoslavia and South America, the town borders were expanded, and Mussolini visited the town twice. After the Italian armistice in 1943, the town was shortly occupied by Slovene partisans, but then fell to Nazi Germany.

The entire region was at the heart of a territorial dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia after World War II. When the new boundaries were drawn up in 1947, the old town was part of Italy, and Nova Gorica was on the Yugoslav side.

No passport needed

Approaching Italy from Slovenia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Today, the two towns form one conurbation that also includes the Slovenian municipality of Šempeter-Vrtojba. Since May 2011, these three towns are joined in a common trans-border metropolitan zone, administered by a joint administration board.

As I stepped between three towns and two countries, no-one asked me for a passport, no one asked me to take my place in a queue, asking for identity, or my opinion on who should be in the European Union and who should be out.

At one point, a Slovenian policeman at a former checkpoint seemed to be amused by my enthusiasm for taking a photograph looking back into the Italian side. At the bar in the Slovenian train station, they called a taxi for me without asking which side of the town I was going to. The taxi driver between one train station and the next worked comfortably in both Italian and Slovene, but only charged in one currency.

Borders in Europe have become meaningless. They respect cultural variety and celebrate difference. It is so sad that they could become a point of political argument and dissent that forget the peace that we have worked so hard to build in Europe not only since the end of World War II in 1945, but since the end of World War I.

The Holocaust Memorial at the Italian train station in Gorizia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A memorial to the victims of the Holocaust at the train station on the Italian side of the town lists the concentration camps where the Jews of Gorizia were murdered … Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Mauthusen, Flossenburg, Ravensbruck, Risiera San Sabba.

Gorizia, with its meaningless border crossings and fences and its Holocaust memorial is a reminder of rise of populist nationalism in Europe in the past and the divisions it brought with it. The Holocaust Memorial is a call to never forget the horrors of racism, the destruction that war brings, and the dangers of erecting new borders in Europe.

Hands across the border at Europa Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This feature was first published in January 2019 in the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) and the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory)

Two rabbis in Venice: 2, Simeon Luzzatto

Simeon Luzzatto argued it was acceptable to travel by gondola on Shabbat (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Advent begins next Sunday [2 December 2018], but so too does the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah. Both are times to think of how the light of God is kept alive in the darkness of the world.

Today, as I think about these themes and finish working on my Sunday sermons, I find myself thinking again of the lives of two rabbis in Venice, both of whom I heard about when I visited Venice and the Ghetto earlier this month.

Simeon (Simcha) ben Isaac Luzzatto (1583-1663) and Leon of Modena (1571-1648) were contemporaries in Venice in the late 16th and 17th centuries.

Simeon (Simcha) Luzzatto (שמחה לוצאטו‎) was a prominent rabbi in the ghetto in Venice, where he shared the rabbinate with Leon de Modena, and their work prefigured the Enlightenment in Europe.

The Luzzatto family of Italian scholars can be traced to the late 15th century or earlier. According to family tradition, the family is descended from a German Jew from the province of Lausitz who migrated to Italy, where he was named after his native place (Lausatia, Lausiatus, Luzzatto). The German rite is said to have been observed in the family synagogue in Venice, the Scuola Luzzatto.

The earliest recorded member of the family is Abraham Luzzatto, who lived at Safed in the late 15th and early 16th century.

His great-great-grandson, Simeon Luzzatto, was born in Venice ca 1580-1583. He was educated by some of the outstanding rabbis of the day, as well as receiving a secular and classical education.

By the age of 20 or 22, many of his works were being published and discussed throughout the Jewish community, and was still a young man when he acquired renown as a rabbi and scholar.

He is styled rabbi at the head of a long responsum, Mish’an Mayim (1606), which he wrote in response to the miḳweh of Rovigo. This responsum shows him to have been an authority in rabbinics and is quoted by many rabbinical authorities.

He shared the rabbinate of Venice with Leon of Modena, who held him in great esteem, and together they wrote a work on the Karaites.

His Discorso circa il stato degli Hebrei et in particolar dimoranti nell’inclita città di Venetia (‘Discourse Concerning the Condition of the Jews, and in particular those living in the Fair City of Venice’), published in 1638, was written in Italian and addressed to the Doge and the leaders of the Venetian Republic.

His Discorso is a treatise on the position of the Jews, particularly those in Venice. It is an apology for the Jews in 18 arguments, each forming a chapter.

For instance, one chapter defends the Jews of Venice and their usefulness in commerce. Another explains the causes of decreases in certain state revenues and shows that encouraging the activities of the Jews would tend to increase those revenues. He points out that the Jews are especially fitted for commerce, that they loyally observe the laws of the state, and that the Venetian Republic reaped great advantages from its relations with them.

The chief merit of this book is its impartiality, for while Luzzatto depicts the better characteristics of the Jews he does not ignore their faults. He shows remarkable knowledge of the commerce of his time and of the political influences that affected it.

According to Luzzatto, the common people felt little antipathy toward the Jews, and depended on them to some extent for their living. He argued that the fanatical religious zealots were found among the patricians who, out of envy, advocated restrictions and even banishment.

The last three chapters include an examination of Hebrew literature and of the various classes of Jewish scholars, an account of the directions in which the Jews were permitted freedom, and of their sufferings, and a survey of the Jews in non-Italian countries.

This discourse was successful in convincing the Doge to rule against an edict to expel the Jewish population from Venice.

Another important work in Italian, Socrates, written in his youth, argues that human reason cannot attain its goals if unaided by divine revelation. This is written in the form of a Platonic dialogue and seeks to prove how useless human reason is without revelation.

In his Socrates, Luzzatto tries to prove the impotence of human reason when unaided by divine revelation. It is in the form of a parable, in which he puts his thoughts into the mouth of Socrates.

Reason, being imprisoned by Orthodox authority, appealed for liberation to the Academy of Delphi, which had been founded to rectify the errors of the human intellect. The academy granted her petition notwithstanding the remonstrance of Pythagoras and Aristotle, who argued that Reason, when free, would spread abroad most frightful errors. Liberated Reason caused great mischief, and the academicians did not know what to do, when Socrates advised combining Reason with Revelation.

Luzzatto dedicated this book to the Doge and Senate of Venice, and stated his ancestors had settled in Venice two centuries earlier. In this book, he also quotes an earlier work he had published, Trattato dell’ Opinioni e Dogmi degl’ Hebrei e dei Riti Loro Piu Principali.

From 1648, he headed the Venetian rabbinate of Venice.

Luzzatto was well acquainted with ancient literature and philosophy and with contemporary literature, and he is praised by Joseph Delmedigo as a distinguished mathematician.

Luzzatto was a thinker and a believer as well. He did not share Manasseh bin Israel’s dream that the lost 10 tribes still exist together in some part of the world.

He maintained that Daniel’s revelation refers not to a future Messiah, but to past historical events. This view of Luzzatto was either misunderstood or deliberately perverted by the convert Samuel Nahmias (Giulio Morosini), who, in his Via della Fide, makes Luzzatto say that Daniel’s revelation may perhaps point to Jesus as the Messiah.

Jacob Aboab asserts that he saw in Venice a collection of Luzzatto’s sermons, speeches and responsa, which included one that argued it was acceptable to travel by gondola on Shabbat.

Simeon (Simcha) ben Isaac Luzzatto died in Venice on 6 January 1663.

Synagogues surround the main square in the Ghetto in Venice … from 1648, Simeon Luzzatto headed the rabbinate of Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This morning: Leon de Modena

Two rabbis in Venice: 1, Leon of Modena

Inside the Schola Spagnola or Sepahrdic synagogue in the Ghetto in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

Advent begins next Sunday [2 December 2018], but so too does the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah. Both are times to think of how the light of God is kept alive in the darkness of the world.

Today, as I think about these themes and finish working on my Sunday sermons, I find myself thinking again of the lives of two rabbis in Venice, both of whom I heard about when I visited Venice and the Ghetto earlier this month.

Leon of Modena (1571-1648) and Simeon (Simcha) Luzzatto (1583-1663) were contemporaries in Venice in the late 16th and 17th centuries, and their work prefigured the Enlightenment in Europe.

Leon of Modena, or Leon Yehudah Aryeh Mi-Modena, or Leon Judah Aryeh of Modena, was a born in Venice on 23 April 1571 into a Sephardic family whose ancestors had migrated to Italy after an expulsion of Jews from Spain.

His parents were Isaac of Modena and Diana Rachel. His grandfather Mordecai, a distinguished physician and philanthropist, was made a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece raised by the Emperor Charles V.

His father ensured Leon had a complete education that included even singing and dancing. At the age of 12, he translated into Hebrew verse the first canto of Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso.

About a year and a half later, he wrote his dialogue against gambling, which saw 10 editions and was translated into Latin, French, German, and Judæo-German. Even at this early age he was not only well versed in Hebrew and rabbinical literature, but was conversant with the classics and had a knowledge of mathematics, philosophy and natural history.

This once precocious child grew up to be a respected rabbi in Venice. However, his reputation within traditional Judaism has suffered for many reasons, including his criticism of emerging sects within Judaism, his addiction to gambling, and his unstable personality.

Although he had fulminated against gambling in his youth, as an adult all his resources were swallowed up in gambling, reducing him to penury and accounting for his misfortunes in life.

Yet, as Heinrich Graetz points out: ‘He pursued all sorts of occupations to support himself … those of preacher, teacher of Jews and Christians, reader of prayers, interpreter, writer, proof-reader, bookseller, broker, merchant, rabbi, musician, matchmaker and manufacturer of amulets.’

In 1590, at the age of 19, after the death of his fiancée, his cousin Esther Simḥah, Modena married her sister Rachel. He wished to embark on a rabbinic career, so in 1592 he returned to Venice, but the Jewish lay leaders raised the age of ordination to 35 and then 40. Modena was forced to find his own opportunities to earn a living and for recognition until he was ordained in 1609.

His sermons in Italian in the synagogues in Venice attracted large numbers, including priests and members of the Venetian nobility. His success as an orator and a poet earned respect among Christian scholars, and gained him admission to the circles in Venetian life.

His pupils included Louis Eselin, a noble French courtier, the Archbishop of Lodève, John Plantanit, Jacob Gaffarelli and Giulio Morosini. Leon de Modena and his student Azaria Piccio later became intellectually close.

wo of his children died in infancy, and two of his adult children who died in his own lifetime: Mordecai, who was endowed with great ability, died at the age of 26 by inhaling fumes during alchemy experiments, while Zebulon was killed in a brawl. A third son Isaac led a dissolute life, emigrated to Brazil, and returned to Venice only after his father’s death.

Of his two daughters, one died in his lifetime, while the second was widowed and she and her family became dependent on Leon for support. His wife became insane in 1641 and remained so until she died.

Although he failed to rise to real distinction, Leon of Modena is best known as the interpreter of Judaism to the Christian world.

He has earned a place in Jewish learning in part for his criticism of the mystical approach to Judaism. One of his most effective works is his attack on the Kabbala, Ari Nohem, in which he tries to show that the ‘Bible of the Kabbalists,’ the Zohar, is a modern composition. He argued that the name Chachmas HaKabbalah, ‘The Wisdom of Kabbalah,’ is misleading, since it is neither ‘wisdom’ nor a Kabbalah or tradition going back to Moses, but a mere fabrication.

His autobiographical Chayye Yehuda (‘The Life of Judah’) is a candid and emotional work, and in it he admits to being a compulsive gambler. His Magen va-hereb (מגן וחרב ‘Shield and Sword’) is a polemical attack on Christian dogmas. In this work, he takes to task Christians for their interpretations of Hebrew scriptures and refutes Christian claims.

At the request of John Donne’s friend, Sir Henry Wotton, the English Ambassador to the Serene Republic, Leon wrote an account of Jewish customs and rituals, Historia de gli riti Hebraici (1637). Wooton’s secretary in Venice was William Bedell (1571-1642), later Bishop of Kilmore, and the original intention was to for present this book to King James I.

This was the first Jewish text addressed to non-Jewish readers since the days of Josephus and Philo. It was widely read by Christians and was translated into many languages, including French, Dutch, German, Latin and – paradoxically – even Hebrew.

A posthumous translation into English by Edmund Chilmead (1650) was published at a the time when the return of Jews to Britain was being debated, and Leon of Modena’s book did much to stimulate popular interest.

He served as cantor in a synagogue in Venice for more than 40 years. Earlier, he is believed to have introduced some sort of polyphony in the synagogue at Ferrara, and wrote two essays on music justifying polyphonic practice in services and celebrations.

His gambling led to a dispute with the leaders of the Jewish community in Venice. In 1631, they decided to excommunicate anyone who played cards or took part in games of hazard, within the period of six years. But Leon wrote a treatise in which he demonstrated that the leaders had acted against the Law, and the order for excommunication was revoked.

His wife Rachel died on 7 March 1648, and he died in Venice two weeks later on 24 March 1648.

Modena’s life is an example of the struggles of early, modern rabbinic authority. His candid and extensive writings provide details about the social and economic conditions of Jewish beliefs and daily life in 17th century Venice and Jewish-Christian relations.

When his writings were rediscovered in the 19th century, they were seen as attacks on traditional Judaism. The early proponents of Reform Judaism looked to him as a precursor, while those who wished to undermine Reform Judaism denigrated him a gambler, a heretic, a hypocrite, and a person filled with complexities and contradictions.

Some portray Modena as a Renaissance Jew or the ‘first modern rabbi.’ But, in fact, the Renaissance in Italy was ending by then and in much of his writings he defends traditional mediaeval rabbinic authority. Perhaps it may be more appropriate to see Modena as one of the last mediaeval rabbis and the period in which he lived as the beginning of modern Jewish thinking.

The Schola Grande Tedesca or great Ashkenazic synagogue in the Ghetto in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Next: Simeon (Simcha) Luzzatto (1583-1663)

A day in the Ghetto in Venice, the first and oldest ghetto in Europe

Inside the Scuola Spagnola in Venice, founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on images for full-screen resolution)

Patrick Comerford

For generations of English-speaking people, our images of the Jewish community in Venice have been coloured indelibly by Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock and his daughter Jessica in The Merchant of Venice.

During my visit to Venice earlier this month, I spent the best part of the day in the Venetian Ghetto, which is the oldest and the original ghetto in Europe. It was a return visit to the ghetto, and I visited the Jewish Museum, a number of synagogues, shops, restaurants and memorials, and strolled through the squares and side streets, over the bridges and along the sides of the canals.

The English word ‘ghetto’ is derived from the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, which was set up by a decree of the Venetian government over 500 years ago, on 29 March 1516, when the Jews of Venice were compelled to live in a segregated area. In mediaeval times, this part of Cannaregio housed a getto or foundry, and from the 16th century this was the Jewish quarter of Venice, so that the word acquired a new meaning.

An 18th century ‘Megillath’ or Scroll of Esther, used in the Italian Synagogue at Purim and now in the Jewish Museum in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

But, while many people know that the ghetto of Venice is the first of its kind, few realise that the Jewish presence in Venice long predates the ghetto.

Jews were trading in Venice as early as the tenth century, and there is evidence that Jews had lived in the Giudecca quarter – formerly called the Spinalonga – in the 11th to 13th centuries. Oral tradition in the Venetian Jewish community holds that there were two synagogues in the Giudecca, although these were demolished as late as the 18th century, and a plaque with a Hebrew inscription was found in the Giudecca near the church of the Zitelle in the 19th century.

Despite common prejudice and anti-Semitism, the mediaeval authorities in Venice realised that Jews could bring invaluable commercial ties with the Near East and important revenue into the city state.

The Venetian Senate invited German Jewish moneylenders to move to the city in 1385. This was followed a year later by a grant of land on the Lido for a Jewish cemetery.

But, while Jews were allowed into the city, this was only for fixed times and they were obliged to wear a yellow circle sewn onto their coats.

Following the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, Iberian Jews began arriving in Venice in the decades immediately after. Among them were marranos or converted Jews who had secretly maintained their traditions, and these Spanish and Portuguese Jews were known as Levantini because many had made their journey through Constantinople, Thessaloniki and other parts of the Levant or Near East.

Increasing numbers of Jews arrived in Venice in the first decade of the 16th century, stimulating an increase in bigotry flamed by the some religious. The Ghetto was decreed in Venice in 1516, and the Papal State – not to be outdone – instituted another version of the ghetto in Rome in 1555.

The Ponte de Ghetto Vecchio leads into the Campo de Ghetto Novo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The ghetto in Venice is divided into three areas: the Ghetto Vecchio or Old Ghetto, the Ghetto Novo or New Ghetto, and the Ghetto Novissimo or ‘Newest Ghetto.’ Paradoxically, and to add to the confusion of visitors, the Ghetto Novo is the oldest Jewish ghetto area in Venice. The ‘old’ and ‘new’ adjectives have nothing to do with the historical dating of the areas but indicate the age of the former foundry or getto.

When the German-speaking Ashkenazim arrived in Venice from Central Europe, their guttural pronunciation changed the Venetian term from getto into ghetto, creating the word we still use today for places where minorities are marginalised.

The Scuola Grande Tedesca or German Grand Synagogue, founded in 1528 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Ghetto was connected to the rest Venice by two bridges that were only open in the day. With the decree in 1516, Jewish lenders, doctors and clothing merchants could take part in the commercial life of Venice by day, but at night and on Christian holidays they were locked into the gated island of the Ghetto Novo.

When Jewish families fleeing the Spanish Inquisition arrived in Venice in 1541, there was no place to build in the Ghetto except to build up. Around the Campo del Ghetto Novo, upper storeys housed new arrivals, synagogues and publishing houses.

The Scola Levantina … founded by Levantine Jews who brought different customs of worship and dress (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Levantine Jews who arrived by the mid-16th century brought different customs of worship and dress that contrasted with the more modest Ashkenazi communities. They were followed by Roman Jews in 1575 and Sephardic Jews in 1589.

Although the Ghetto was home to a large number of Jews, they never integrated to form a distinct, Venetian Jewish identity, and the names of the five synagogues reflected the linguistic and geographical origins of the community:

● the Scuola Grande Tedesca or German Grand Synagogue, founded in 1528;

● the Scuola Canton, built as a private synagogue for four Ashkenazic families of French origin who funded its construction in 1531;

● the Scola Levantina, founded in 1541 by the Levantine Sephardi communities;

● the simple, rooftop Scuola Italiana or Italian synagogue, built in 1575 by newly-arrived, destitute Italian Jews who had fled Spanish-occupied southern Italy;

● the Scuola Spagnola, founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews.

The Scuola Spagnola was founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

In addition, Venice also has a large population of Lubavitcher followers of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson of Brooklyn, who died in 1994. They run a kosher food shop, a restaurant and a yeshiva, and have their own Chabad synagogue.

In the heart of the Ghetto in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Jewish community of Venice was intellectually and culturally distinguished for centuries. The leading figures include Elia Levita (grammarian), poetess Sara Copio Sullam, and the rabbis Leone da Modena and Simone Luzzato. Venetian Jews were allowed to study at the prestigious Università di Padova and Venice became a centre of Jewish scholarship and, with the arrival of Daniel Bomberg from Antwerp, the printing trade.

Meir Magino was a famous glassmaker from the ghetto, while Margherita Grassini Sarfatti was a noted journalist, critic, patroness of the avant-garde – and Mussolini’s mistress.

Setbacks were common too. The Counter-Reformation proved particularly difficult, and when Pope Julius II ordered the destruction of the Talmud in 1553, the Venetian authorities responded with a mass bonfire in Saint Mark’s Square. The bubonic plague struck Venice on several occasions, and a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery on the Lido is marked simply: ‘Ebrei 1631.’

The messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi in the mid-17th century divided the Jewish community of Venice and by 1737 the community was forced to file for bankruptcy.

In 1797 Napoleon’s army captured Venice, dissolved the Venetian republic, and ended the ghetto’s segregation from the city. The Jews of Venice experienced six months of freedom before the Austrian administration restricted them to the Ghetto once again.

When Venice was integrated into the modern Italian state in 1866, the Jews of Venice gained full emancipation, but even that was short-lived.

The fascist racial laws introduced in September 1938 deprived Jews of civil rights, and the Jewish community entered a difficult period under the leadership first of Aldo Finzi and then from June 1940 of Professor Giuseppe Jona.

In September 1943, the Nazis started a systematic hunt for Jews in Venice. On 17 September 1943, Giuseppe Jona died by suicide rather than hand over a list of Jewish community residents. In November 1943, Jews were declared ‘enemy aliens’ to be arrested and their property seized.

The Chief Rabbi of Venice, Adolfo Ottolenghi (1885-1944), chose to stay with his people during the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Some Jews from Venice escaped to neutral Switzerland or Allied-occupied southern Italy, but 200 or more Jews were rounded up between 5 December 1943 and late summer 1944, and were deported, in most cases, to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those arrested later in 1944 included 20 residents of a Jewish convalescence home, 29 patients from a Jewish hospital, and the Chief Rabbi of Venice, Adolfo Ottolenghi (1885-1944), who chose to stay with his community.

Most of those arrested that summer were detained in Risiera di San Sabba, a concentration camp near Trieste.

The Jewish population of Venice in 1938 had numbered 2,000; by the end of the war, their numbers were reduced to 1,500 or, according to some sources, 1,050. Only eight Jewish people from Venice survived the death camps.

The old people’s home in heart of the Ghetto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Today the Jewish Community in Venice numbers about 450. Few of these people actually live in the Ghetto, but many return to the Ghetto for religious services in the two synagogues that are still used – the other three synagogues are open for guided tours organised through the Jewish Community Museum.

But the Ghetto is now a lively and popular district of the city where the religious and administrative institutions of the Jewish Community alongside the synagogues. The community maintains the synagogues, as well as social facilities, a kindergarten, old people’s home, kosher guest house, kosher restaurant and a bakery. The Ghetto also has a yeshiva, and several Judaica shops.

The memorial sculptures by Arbit Blatas commemorate the victims of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Memorial sculptures by Arbit Blatas commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. These harrowing bas-reliefs line two walls in the Campo del Ghetto Novo, with the names and ages of the people murdered in the Holocaust. Close-by, Chief Rabbi Adolfo Ottolenghi is commemorated in a memorial tablet.

The Jewish Museum of Venice, in the Campo of the Ghetto Novo, between the two oldest synagogues, was founded in 1954. One area of is dedicated to the cycle of Jewish holidays and the liturgy. It displays books and manuscripts, precious objects and textiles from the 16th to the 19th century and objects of religious life. A second area tells the story of the Ghetto and the persecution of the Jews, from its origins to the concentration camps in World War II.

The Jewish Museum of Venice is open from 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., 1 October to 31 May, and until 7 p.m. from 1 June to 30 September. Hourly guided tours of the synagogues (in Italian and English) start at 10.30 (museum admission, €4; museum and synagogue tour, €10). The museum is closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays.

After visiting the Ghetto, we had a late lunch in Gam Gam, the Chabad-run restaurant in the Ghetto, with a table looking out onto the Cannaregio Canal and views of the Guglie Bridge near the Grand Canal.

Words from the Book of Job in the Jewish Museum … a chilling reminder of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Links:

The Jewish Community of Venice : http://www.jvenice.org/

The Jewish Ghetto Map: http://venice.jc-r.net/campi/ghetto.htm

The Jewish Museum of Venice: http://www.museoebraico.it/en/museum/

Kosher in Venice: http://www.jvenice.org/en/jewish-life/kosher-venice, a page with links to Ristorante Ghimel Garden, the Giardino dei Melograni guesthouse, and Panificio Volpe Giovanni, a bakery and grocery shop.

Bancorosso: http://www.bancorosso.org/, where the ‘Red Bench’ allows you to relive the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

The churches and mosaics of Torcello are reminders of the beginnings of Venice

The mosaics in the main east apse in the Basilica in Torcello are among the finest Byzantine mosaics (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

My island-hopping venture through the Lagoon of Venice last week, visiting the islands of San Michelle, Murano, Mazzorbo and Burano, finally brought me to Torcello, just five minutes from Burano and the most northerly island in the Lagoon.

This is the island to which Venice traces its cultural and ecclesiastical roots, and the seventh century cathedral is the oldest building in the Lagoon.

The first people settled on Torcello in the fifth or sixth century, and over time it grew into a thriving colony with a cathedral, churches, palaces, and a population that peaked at 20,000 people.

Today just a few dozen people at most live on the clustered islands that make up Torcello, and they depend mainly on tourism for their livelihood. But this remains an attractive island, with its historical sites, restaurants, cafés, vineyards, and tiny bridges crossing from one islet to the next.

From the pier, a seven-minute walk leads along the banks of the main canal, beside attractive restaurants and footbridges, to the square and the surviving sites of Torcello.

Mist and fog descend on the canal beside the basilica in Torcello (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Along the way, the avenue passes the ‘Devil’s Bridge,’ and a little further on a second bridge leads into the town square, unpaved and covered in clay and gravel and lined with a small number of souvenir stalls and – even in November – an ice-cream stall.

Torcello was the largest and most important settlement in the Venetian Lagoon. It was first settled in 452 and is known as the parent island from which Venice was populated. It was a town with a cathedral and bishops long before Saint Mark’s Basilica was built.

After the downfall of the Western Roman Empire, Torcello was one of the first islands in the lagoon to be populated by people who fled the mainland to seek shelter from wave after wave of barbarian invasions, especially after Attila the Hun destroyed the city of Altino and the surrounding settlements in 452.

A small vineyard on Torcello (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Although the Veneto region belonged to the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna from the end of the Gothic War, it remained unsafe because of frequent Germanic invasions and wars. During the following 200 years, the Lombards and the Franks drove urban refugees to the relative safety of Torcello, including the Bishop of Altino.

Torcello became the bishop’s official seat in 638, and it remained so for more than 1,000 years. The people of Altino brought with them the relics of Saint Heliodorus, now the patron of the island and now kept in a Roman sarcophagus below the High Altar.

Torcello had close cultural, political and economic ties with Constantinople. However, it was a distant outpost and established de facto autonomy from the Eastern Empire.

Torcello grew rapidly as a political and trading centre, and for centuries was a more powerful trading centre than Venice. In the 10th century, it had a population of up to 20,000 people. Thanks to the salt marshes in the lagoon, salt became Torcello’s economic backbone and its harbour developed quickly into an important post in the profitable east-west trade, controlled largely by Byzantium.

The Church of Santa Fosca seen through the arches and the colonnades of the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Black Death devastated Venice in 1348 and again in 1575-1577. In three years, the plague killed some 50,000 people. In 1630, the Italian plague of 1629-1631 killed a third of Venice’s 150,000 citizens.

Another crisis for Torcello developed when that the swamp area of the lagoon around the island increased from the 14th century, partly because of the lowering of the land level. Silt from rivers on the mainland filled up the shallow waters around Torcello, navigation in the laguna morta (dead lagoon) was impossible before long and traders ceased calling at the island. The growing swamps also seriously aggravated malaria.

Many people left Torcello for Murano, Burano and Venice, the bishopric was transferred to Murano in 1689, and by 1797 the population of Torcello had dropped to about 300. Many of Torcello’s numerous palazzi, its 12 parish churches and its 16 cloisters were purloined for building material by the Venetians and almost all have disappeared.

The only remaining mediaeval structures are one small palazzo, the cathedral, its bell-tower, the adjacent church, the town’s former council chamber and archives.

The Byzantine-Italian Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta dates from 639 AD (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The magnificent Byzantine-Italian cathedral, the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, dates back to 639 AD and rises above the island, with the Bell Tower and Church of Santa Fosca alongside.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta was founded in 639, but underwent radical rebuilding in 1008. The present basilica is of basilica-form with side aisles but no crossing. It includes many earlier features, and has much 11th and 12th century Byzantine work.

The Domesday mosaic depicting the Last Judgment covers the entire west wall, but is hidden from view by scaffolding during restoration work (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

One of the most moving mosaics in Venice is the 13th century mosaic in the central apse of the Virgin Hodegetria or the Virgin Mary in a blue robe with gold fringing, cradling the Christ Child, with the 12 Apostles at their feet.

A highly decorative and vivid Domesday mosaic depicting the Last Judgment covers the entire west wall, although it is being restored at present and is hidden from view by scaffolding.

The mosaic in the right apse depicts Christ Pantocrator enthroned between two archangels (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The mosaic in the right apse depicts Christ Pantocrator enthroned between two archangels, Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel, with the Lamb of God in a medallion of the vault.

The pulpit is made from fragments from the first, seventh century church. The Byzantine marble panels of the iconostasis or rood screen are carved with peacocks, lions and flowers. The finely carved capitals on the nave columns date from the 11th century.

The floor of the basilica is a vivid swirl of colours (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The flooring of the basilica is a vivid swirl of colours in bright tesserae of stone and glass, with cubes, semicircles and triangles laid in square designs.

The Church of Santa Fosca dates from the 11th and 12th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Church of Santa Fosca, standing beside the basilica, dates from the 11th and 12th century. It is built in the form of a Greek cross, is surrounded by a five-sided, semi-octagonal colonnaded portico, and a Byzantine interior.

Inside the Church of Santa Fosca (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The central dome and cross sections are supported on columns of Greek marble with fine Corinthian columns.

The central dome in the Church of Santa Fosca (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

On the left side of the square, the Museo Provinciale di Torcello is housed in two 14th century palaces, the Palazzo dell’Archivio and the Palazzo del Consiglio, built in Gothic style as the seat of government of the island.

A marble stone chair in the square is known as Attila’s Throne (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A marble stone chair in the square is known as Attila’s Throne. Legend says it was used as a throne by the fifth century King of the Huns. It is more likely that it belonged to the Bishops of Torcello, or the podestà, a city governor, or, perhaps, the seat where chief magistrates were inaugurated.

Ernest Hemingway stayed at the Locanda Cipriani when he was working on ‘Across the River and Into the Trees’ in 1948 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Many artists, musicians and film stars have spent time on the island. Ernest Hemingway stayed at the Locanda Cipriani, a guesthouse, when he was writing parts of Across the River and Into the Trees in 1948.

Torcello is also the setting for Daphne du Maurier’s short story, Don’t Look Now, made into a film starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie (1973).

There are many legends about the name of the stone bridge known as the ‘Ponticello del Diavolo’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

As we walked back to the pier, we stopped at the stone bridge known as the Ponticello del Diavolo or the Devil’s Little Bridge. The bridge attracts the curious attention of many visitors who are spun a number of stories about its name. One legend says the devil appeared here one night by the devil to win a bet.

Another legend dates from the time of Austrian rule in Venice. A young woman fell in love with an Austrian soldier, but he was killed by her family who regarded the relationship as unpatriotic.

The distraught young woman sought the aid of a witch who agreed to meet her on Torcello as an isolated island. The witch called upon the devil who brought the young Austrian back to life, and the two lovers were reunited. But the devil forced the witch to promise that for the next seven years she would bring him the soul of a dead child who had recently died on Christmas Eve each year.

The witch died soon after in a fire and was unable to keep her pact. To this day, it is said, the devil comes to the Devil’s Bridge in Torcello each Christmas Eve in the guise of a black cat and claims in vain the souls he was promised.

In reality, the bridge may have taken its name because there are no protective sides on the bridge, leaving those who cross it with a feeling that it was built in a hurry, without attention to the risks and dangers it may have created.

As we walked on, we stopped to linger a while in the Taverna Tipica Veneziana, before catching the waterbus back to Burano, and on to Venice as evening darkness closed in.

In the semi-octagonal portico of the Church of Santa Fosca (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)