EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 79, 2 March 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

VENETIAN STREETS. It may come as a surprise to those who have never been to Venice to be told that there is no house in all this maze of waterways which has not a door to a street. There is a land entrance as well as waterway to all, and the streets of Venice—-three thousand of them—are all winding except one, the well known Morceria, which every tourist walks along. Not every tourist walks along the others. But they are worth visiting. One might walk day after day for week after week, and never enter the same street twice. There are so many of them, and they are so narrow and tortuous, leading one so deeply in among the houses and waterways, and crossing so oddly, that even the experienced Venetian may be pardoned for getting lost, and indeed you will find notices: To. the Railway Station, posted up, not so much for your benefit (for none ever expects you to go into these byways) as for the people of Venice. You come to campos or squares with palaces which have had their great days and are now let off as tenements. You come to churches by the score. You meet the Venetians, and find them a laughing, good-humoured crowd, talking in their soft language. There are open-fronted shops with all sorts of oddments displayed. There are historic sites to see. There are cafes. There are sudden glimpses of colour and shade which every artist wants to paint—a peep of an ornate building reflected in the canal, a vista of houses, the blue sky, a gondola and a parasol. Round the corner there lived Marco Polo. On these steps here (the water rippling over them) Casanova sang before being imprisoned in a palace near by and escaping some months after. Here the Doges walked. Here But you must see Venice.—(G.)