VENETIAN CLASS

Venice should never have made it. It really should have sunk centuries ago. Hardly even a city in the accepted sense – it is more a collection of over a hundreds islands in a lagoon, tied together haphazardly by around four hundred arched stone bridges. Break those and you could almost imagine the whole place bobbing off in various directions into the Adriatic.

And yet, it is magic. Rising out of the misty waters, Venice is a mythic kingdom, unlike any other. Once there it is easy to daydream yourself back to the time when it all came about, to picture the  frantic desperation than drove its founders to annex what was little more than a marshy swamp, daring their attackers to come after them and risk a watery defeat.

Venice has had its ups and downs over the centuries. Acknowledged as the 'Gateway to the Orient', Venice became an independent Byzantine province in the tenth century, and the 1204 Crusade brought it into prominence as a trading link, bestowing wealth and power on its merchants. During the Middle Ages a succession of doges, or feudal dukes, ruled the watery suburbia, but finally it fell to Napoleon in 1797, joining the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.

Today's Venice is more staid. More steady. And that's not just a feeling. It actually is more secure. A few years ago when the buildings began to sway a little, they shored up many of the foundations, ramming down beside the wooden tree-sized pylons that have held the city's head above water so well, for so long.

Everyone knows about Venetian glass, and yet to find the best you need to catch a boat for a ten-minute ride to the nearby island of Murano, although any shop in town has masses of it too.

Yet not all Venice is gleaming and perfect. Any gondola or vaporetto (waterbus) ride through the canals puts you at eye-level with crumbling stucco and rotting woodwork.

If Venice was a relative, she would be a dowager aunt, her wardrobe a little musty, her petticoat showing occasionally, with  some of the lace coming adrift. Her favourite bonnet is slightly askew, and she forgets where she is occasionally. But there is a gleam in her eye, and when she sets the table for a party, such as the annual carnival, the masks come out, covering the worst of the wear and she is young and beautiful and elegant – and desirable – all over again.

Venice may be known for her glass, but she has class too.