Venice: Sacred and Profane

Gentile Bellini - 'Miracolo della reliquia della Croce al ponte di San Lorenzo' (c.1500)

Venice: Sacred and Profane

Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic.
A city of squares, festivals, and churches; saturated in historical relics and icons of merchantile wealth from the era of La Serenissima.

A city sinking under the weight of rising sea levels and over-tourism.

A city which, left solely to the tides of time, will be little more than the ruins of Babylon, Thebes and Petra. The emergency is very real as this city struggles to balance the glory of its past with the demands of its many secular pilgrims.

The fabric of Venice is testament to its sense of the Sacred. From the squares which act as public ritualistic spaces to the temples, to the acts of collective effervescence in the festivals. This is a city which understands itself in the ceremony of the 'Spozalizio del Mare' (Marriage to the Sea), wherein a ring representing the renewal of the city's spousal relationship is gifted to the Adriatic.
Has this marriage run its course? Has the sea forsworn its Queen? Have the festivals become a farse, an imitation of history?

Venice: The Dowager of the Sea

With the population of Venice fleeing the islands in the 20th century to present, is there a Venice of the future, or are we to expect the gradual demise of the once proud Merchant Republic to succumb to Consumerism?

La Serenissima? (Author's own collage)