Today, I am sharing some photography of Windows of Venice, Italy.  As a blogger, I will at times visit a place with a rough idea of certain posts that I will probably write.  I’ve planned my time, picked the sites I want to see, and can pretty much predict I will do a post about Our Private Gondola Ride, or about All the Intriguing Tidbits I Researched in Piazza San Marco.  I even have a good idea of whether there will be a post about the doors, or at least know that fairly quickly upon arrival (of course there’s one about the Doors of Venice).

This post on windows of Venice is more a result of realizing, after walking Venice for a number of days, that I was really accumulating a LOT of pictures of windows.  Wow, I mean, a lot.

Venice architecture in incredibly unique.  If you spend any time at all purposely observing such things, you will quickly reach a point that you can see a generic stock photo in a frame for sale in the craft store, and immediately know it was taken in Venice.  The city was founded around 400AD, and over the intervening centuries absorbed Gothic, Byzantine, and Ottoman influences into what became known as Venetian Gothic.  You can see evidence of this in the windows throughout the city.

But there are wonderful examples of Baroque and Renaissance, and nearly every great style of the past, throughout Venice.  Windows of every age are on display.  I was recently listening to an architect discuss Venice (yes, because I’m a nerd… moving on), and he made the statement that ‘every Venetian building is a study in grandeur.’  And, it doesn’t take long in the city to understand the truth of that statement.

In the same Architecture talk, James Biber commented that we all love to visit ruins, but the ruined state is not what those ruins originally were.  That is like Venice.  What we see today is the ‘ruins’ of what was there at the height.  He wondered aloud if we would like Venice as it originally was.

I would love to quickly jump in and said I would!  How amazing and intriguing would it be to see Venice as it was intended then?  But, honestly, a big part of the attraction for me is the history – that would not have been written yet.  The strength and resilience of a city to see age after age come and go, and continue to be of the water, beautiful, almost out of a fairy tale.  At Venice’s height, when it was new, these parts would be just an inkling of things to come.

And I have to admit, I’m drawn to the worn-ness, even in the windows.  To the signs of age.  The tired softening of the city.  Maybe it’s because I can relate.

Whatever the rhyme or reason, day after day I took the opportunity to explore new corners of the city.  My camera took me down dead-end alleys and found little squares without a single eatery or coffee shop to be seen.

From the gorgeously overgrown windows, to ones that are beautifully simple… I wish I could seek these places out as a career.

And I just have to wonder how this window came to be:

 

Or this… I mean, is this on purpose?  Or should we send help for the person trapped inside?

 

 

And sometimes, it’s just the mundane practicality that speaks to my soul:

Thanks for spending a few minutes of your day enjoying the Windows of Venice with me.

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