Tuesday, April 16, 2024

San Giorgio Maggiore – It CAN Be On Your Venice Itinerary, but Doesn’t HAVE To Be

The small island across from the waterfront at Piazza San Marco is dominated by San Giorgio Maggiore and its bell tower.  

The previous times I had been to Venice, I had wondered about the cool little island across the lagoon.  For some reason, I got it in my head that I wanted to visit it.  So when planning this trip, I planned for us to go over. 

Now, going there wasn’t horrible, but in retrospect I think we could have gone to a more interesting place with the time we spent getting to/from the island.

We took the vaporetto one stop to San Giorgio, and it was fun getting some more time on the water.  This time we went a LOT faster than our gondola ride.

The church is famous for being designed by Palladio, but it’s been emptied out and a modern art exhibit was being installed.  From what we saw of the “art” that was already installed and being installed (Editor: Uh-oh, I feel another anti-modern rant coming on) it was typical modern art crap.  

And by “modern art” I don’t mean Picasso or Dali, I mean meaningless stuff that neither Carol nor I can stand.  No, not everything has to be Monet, van Gogh, da Vinci, or Michelangelo, but I’ve seen more interesting art from eight year olds.  

As a society and a culture, we’d be better off if starving modern art artists actually did starve, so they couldn’t make any more this crap.

(Editor: You might want to delete that last paragraph.  Writer: I just want my opinion to be understood.  If there’s an outcry from my readers, yes, I will delete, but somehow I don’t think I’ll be getting many, if any, outraged emails).

So we bought our tickets and went up the bell tower, which looks like a smaller version of the Campanile across the lagoon.  The views were great, but literally that’s the only reason to go.

The Doge's Palace, crossing the water.
(Editor: The Palace was NOT crossing
the water.  Writer: Good point, we
were crossing the water.)

The Campanile on the
main island of Venice.

The Campanile from
the bell tower.

Not just the Doge's Palace, but behind
it you can see the onion domes of
the Basilica of St. Mark.

The glamor shot.

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