Travel
City of spices: Venice A city of contradictions, Venice collapses under the weight of its own success. Once the heart of the world’s trade, now it’s a vanishing destination for the world’s tourists. Dave Reeder, with notepad and camera, details the city’s food past and where to find Venetian cuisine today.
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s you approach Venice by plane, low over the impossibly coloured lagoon, the first sight of the city is always a reminder of much it owes to the sea the main islands even look like a fish on a plate! Then, as the water bus or taxi takes you across the water, reality strikes home as the damage to low outlying islands and the ubiquitous dirt appear. Venice may be dreamlike and romantic, but its very qualities are destroying it - infrastructure collapsing under the sheer weight of tourist numbers, residential population relocating to the mainland, serene beauty blighted by giant cruise liners and, of course, sea slowly reclaiming the city built on piles driven into the lagoon bed. Yet for centuries, Venice was the trade centre of the world, the key hub between east and west, Christian and Muslim cultures for almost five centuries. Unimaginable amounts of money made the city wealthy beyond any other city’s reach but, longterm, it was Venice’s position as a conduit
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9/26/12 10:51 AM