Venice: Infinitely Avant-Garde

1600 years after its legendary founding, Venice continues to be unique: for its urban environment, made of stone, earth and water, and because of its legendary history. But, above all, Venice is unique for its identity as a contradictory city combining contrasting DNA blueprints in an amazing paradox: the attraction of decadence and the excitement of being on the cutting edge.The Canal Grande, the Museo Correr, Canaletto’s landscapes, works by Francesco Guardi, Pietro Longhi, Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Vittore Carpaccio, and of course those by Bellini at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, and Tiziano, Tintoretto, and Veronese. And again Ca’ Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento Veneziano (the museum dedicated to 18th Century Venice), the Grand Tour, Canova’s sculptures, the classic pictures by photographer Carlo Naya that took Europe by storm, old trades and professions seen in photographs by Enrico Fantuzzi, the Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, Emilio Vedova and his battle to save the Magazzini del Sale (salt warehouses), Carmelo Bene reading the Futurist Manifesto Contro Venezia passatista (Against an Antiquated Venice), transgressive behaviour at the Carnival, the age-old furnaces that have now become Adriano Berengo’s experimental laboratories, the arrival of the Togni Circus and its elephants over the city’s historical bridges, plays by Goldoni, amazing Art Nouveau style villas, elegance and style at the Lido, Venetian style parties at the house of American composer Cole Porter and his wife Linda, the jazz era, high society events held by American journalist Elsa Maxwell, Banksy’s mysterious art works, John Ruskin’s diaries filled with appointments, the contemplative, colourful vibrations of water expressed by Turner, the tombs of Sergej Djagilev and Igor Stravinskij, the attraction of the Giudecca, the Caffè Florian and the birth of the Biennale exhibition, the Venice Film Festival and the first nude in the history of the cinema, Wagner’s sleepless nights in Venice, the artists Giulia Lama and Rosalba Carriera, and the first woman to receive a university degree Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the strong- mindedness of the ladies of court, Murano glass and Giuseppe Lorenzo Briati’s masterpieces, Casanova’s escapes, the MOSE and environmental emergency, Hugo Pratt’s love for the city, Napoleonic plundering, the Empress Sissi’s stays in the city, inlay work by Andrea Brustolon whom Balzac used to call the Michelangelo of wood, Mariano Fortuny and his wife Henriette’s fabric and clothes, the Marchesa Casati Stampa, the fabulous, unpredictable, eccentric Peggy Guggenheim, the splendour of the Fenice Opera House, one of the world’s most beautiful temples of music.Venice has never become fossilized in preserving one, single historical identity, but has always let itself be continuously reinvented with rebellious flair, through the ingeniousness and creativity of passing travellers, as well as its own inhabitants. This is the great challenge the future holds, to solve emergencies and problems, to be a city at the cutting edge of culture, creativity and sustainability in the future.