Venice, the eternal biennale

I happened to be in northern Italy last November and took the opportunity to make a brief visit to Venice; although I had visited the Lagoon several times, I had never managed to get up close - in the daylight - to see Santa Maria della Salute, the example of perfection incarnated in stone by the great Baldasare Longhena. So this recent visit has given me the opportunity to record some of the physical and cultural context in which the Architects' Biennale is taking place in 2023.
I caught a day with a doubtful sun. The city was covered with banners inviting you to take advantage of the last days of the Art Biennale, an edition in which the Romanian presence (in some cases also supported by the Romanian institutions) was quite consistent (but, alas, also very uneven in terms of the thoroughness of the artistic act itself). Fortunately, my visit to the Gardens - cut short by circumstances - did not confirm my fears in recent years that contemporary art had become completely detached from the public, or that it had already moved away from the abstract founders of the modern age towards aridity and a dryness of inner vibration. I was therefore happy to see many works that went beyond the magical threshold of "taking it home", works that showed the emotion inherent in the act of creation...
As every time I wandered through the streets and squares of Venice, I was reminded of Dinicu Golescu's description of the city when he passed through there in 1825. And I tell myself again and again that, perhaps, while writing the "Notes..." the Wallachian nobleman thus became the first Romanian architecture critic/chronicler. This conviction is reinforced every time I recall his visits to Brasov, Sibiu, Cluj, Oradea, Oradea, Budapest, Vienna and many other cities, large and small.
In his writing, Dinicu Golescu makes up for the shortcomings in the vocabulary of the language at that time through his inventiveness. In 'Insemnarea călătoriii mele', a text that should perhaps be at the head of any Romanian intellectual in terms of the feelings that animate the author, the description of places is made with nerve and flavor, in a way that shows the author's vast culture. That is why the selection of the paragraphs introduced at the end, in the inevitably limited space of this article, was a laborious task...
But, to return to Venice, it is only by comparing Golesc's text with the pedestrian journey of today's traveler that one realizes that Venice is not a museum (be it a museum of architecture), an artifact that bears frozen witness to the glory of past centuries, to the splendour of the Renaissance and Baroque, to Titian, Canaletto, Palladio and Longhena. What animates the city today, more than tourism, the prestigious Golden Lion or the Biennale, is - visibly - the long-distance effort of the city's mayors to modernize the city and at the same time to revive its ancient charm. When I say this, some will probably think of the paradigm of the age we are living in - the sustainability aspects of development. But I am referring rather to what has happened since the end of the 19th century when, with le gros d`oeuvre already completed, it had to be enhanced (not just preserved, but transformed into a visually pleasing and comfortable whole for the community and those who pass through its gates). And this did not just mean polishing and patinating existing spaces and buildings or filling holes in the urban fabric with well-integrated fillings, nor just placing works of art to enliven public spaces.
The effort we have been talking about has meant placing in Venice the imprint of the eras it has faced. Thus, starting in 1894, when the Central Pavilion of the Venetian Biennale, then called the "Padiglione Pro Arte", was built, the I Giardini were gradually populated with the pavilions that to this day house the exhibitions organized during the events. The Central Pavilion, originally built in Art Nouveau style by Enrico Trevisanato and Marius De Maria, was remodelled several times (Gio Ponti and Carlo Scarpa were among those who intervened) until it reached the rationalist image we see today (the current façade was designed in 1932 by Duilio Torres). The Italian avant-garde rationalist style was also used in the design of many other pavilions built in the inter-war period. In 1907, Léon Sneyens built the Belgian pavilion; in 1912, the French (architect Umberto Bellotto) and Dutch (demolished and rebuilt in 1953 by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld) pavilions were built; in 1922, Javier De Luque built the Spanish pavilion, whose facade was renovated in 1952 by Joaquin Vaquero Palacios; 1926 was the year in which the pioneer of Czechoslovak modernism (architect Joaquin Vaquero Palacios) built the Spanish pavilion. Otakar Novotny) built his country's pavilion; in 1932, Brenno Del Giudice built the Venice pavilion and the Romanian pavilion, and in 1934 he collaborated with M. Papandreou on the Greek pavilion. In 1954 Carlo Scarpa built the pavilion of Venezuela, and in 1956 the pavilions of Japan (architect Takamasa Yoshizaka) and Finland (architect M. Alvar Aalto); Richard Rogers' less well known, but no less talented brother, Ernesto, built the Canada pavilion in 1958 with his colleagues from Gruppo BBPR; the most recent pavilions are those designed by James Stirling (1991, the pavilion that bears his name) and the Korea pavilion (1995) built by Seok Chul Kim and Franco Mancuso (and I have only mentioned a few of the 29 national pavilions...).
In the meantime, the railroad also arrived on the banks of the Grand Canal (1943) with the inauguration of the Santa Lucia Station, built according to the plans of the rationalist architects Angiolo Mazzoni and Virgilio Vallot, beautifully integrated by its horizontal dominance in the front of the buildings facing the water span of Venice's main thoroughfare.
Finally, 2008 saw the inauguration, not far from the station, of the Ponte della Constituzione(Constitution Bridge), designed by Santiago Calatrava, a monument remarkable not least for the discretion and elegance with which cutting-edge technology has been put to the service of the city.
Approaching Venice, the great Dinicu says that ' Even earthly heaven is not far from here, nor is earthly heaven, Italy (...), for one will hardly find tranquility and ordinary life in many places.
Further on, describing the city in an elevated and sure language, our traveler reckons that from what he sees, he can judge that there was once a time when there was no other city more beautiful, more powerful and brighter. For at every step that a man takes, he sees things that were done at great expense - such as St. Mark's Square, which is quite large, three parts of which are also the buildings of houses, where at that time all the dukes who were the greatest of the Sinat were barking. These three parts of buildings have their faces about the square on the pillars, in the lower row; between the houses and between the pillars are narrow streets, two fathoms wide, paved with stone slabs. In all the lower halls, which cover these three parts of the market, there are shops selling the most expensive goods, and a multitude of^losts1 (...)) That square and those three alleys are full of people of stallholders and passers-by, where they read newspapers, give and receive letters, and any one goes about any business, and especially in the evening, when all these places are brightly lit, with two or three candles in each shop and shop, besides the city lanterns.
At the fourth side and head of the square is the Church of St. Mark; and before the doors of the church are three very lofty pillars, which bear witness to the victory when the Venetians overpowered the Venetians of Cyprius, Criti, and Moreia. To the left, in a high wall, a clock; above the clock is a notch in the wall, in which is the Mother Precesta incarnate and overlaid with gold. To the right and to the left are two doors, also polished, and from one to the otheran iron balcony. On the day of the Feast of the Ascension, after the first stroke of the first hour, he opens the door on the right, from which an angel comes out, again incarnate and also polished, and through the balcony he goes to the balcony before the Virgin of Precious, where he stands, and as he leaves, he blows a trumpet, with which he shouts three times; then, again leaving, he goes to the door on the left, where he approaches, opens it and the angel enters. Then, from the door on the right, those three sorcerers come out, again incarnate and powdered, with the gifts they bring to Mother Precista, who again standing and leaving, follows after the angel, and entering through the door on the left, and closes both of them.(...) And at the very top of this unenveloped building is the clock-bell, where on either side of it stand two large brass ^devils2 holding hammers in their hands and striking the clocks. And to the right is a taller bell tower of 25 fathoms. As for the church, which is a wonderfully bright thing, I end with only one description, namely, that all the saints and all that is to be painted in a church, instead of being painted, are all in mosaic, and the place that remains from one saint to another is again mosaic, overlaid with gold. And the floor of the church, with pieces of large and small stones made into flowers, like a mosaic. And outside the church, only the tower again in mosaic. And above the door in the middle are four horses molded of a mixture of metals, which to this day people cannot find out what materials they were made of. Their countenance is very little green, more stuffed than blue-green, and as hard as gold. But these faces are not separate, but mixed, as the face of a piece of maldehi, which is in two faces. At the head of these great pillars, on the right hand, is a head of another pillar, whose other head is on the sea's edge. On the right side of these marketplaces again are great walls with pillars and alleys between the houses, which keep the walls of the great marketplaces together. And to the left is a great building, where in that ancient time the greatest dowager, the ruler of Venice, used to keep his barns, and now with a library and many other things of great price. The craftsmanship, the beauty and the unobtrusive adornment of these buildings are worthy of note, especially a vaulted staircase (Scala dei Giganti, n.n..), the vault of which is of marble slabs, with a multitude of small statues and slices of flowers and architectural ornaments, all in marble and so hung that one thinks one will see them; and all these bas-reliefs worked in gold. And in a great hall, on a bed (podium, n.n.), set a doge's jewel, and round about all the halls three rows of doges for those dukes, and for the poor men that were sent from other kingdoms to speak for the matters that were between them. And the walls of this hall were adorned with large frames of three and four fathoms, in which those sent messengers and all the earthly people were to be covered. Altă sală, cu multe lucruri din vechime foarte scumpe, cum multe statue statue de marmură de de deosibite persoane (...)
Dinicu Golescu then proceeds along the Molo as far as the gardens that today house the Venetian Biennale, and this is what he tells us:
Dintru această de al doilea^piață3 să împreună un strada lung ca de un ceas, și foarte lat, pe la unile locuri și de 10 stânjini, pardosit tot cu lespezi de piatră, având a mâna le stânga împreunate zidiri case, iar a mâna dreaptă marginea mare, cu multe corăbii și luntrii. At the end of this road there is a very beautiful garden, open to all the city's inhabitants. (...)
The beautiful description that follows is taken as if from a painting (realized only a few years later) by the nineteenth-century painter Ippolito Caffi, which helps us to see the magnificent Lagoon through the moved eyes of the nobleman from the mountains:
It happened the day when I saw all that road, with both the squares that go together, full of people, chain chaining themselves one after the other; and on my return, being night, even more beautiful, the whole road being lighted, and all those shops, in the length of that road, open and lighted. And in that great marketplace no man went where he would, but where the people thronged him, and where the ostest music was sung, and all that chain of people^thronged4.
It is not my intention in this modest article to review the centuries that have elapsed since the invasions of the Huns and Lombards, in other words since the founding of the city; it is enough to recall the technique of building on the lake, on wooden pillars, developed by the architects and craftsmen of Venice... giving it a paradoxical perenniality, which is what made the old city famous. Since its foundation, Venice has always been at the forefront of the arts in general and architecture in particular. In the image of its Biennale, Venice has been an eternal biennale for 16 centuries.

Notes:

1. Osteria.
2. Meaning: dragoni.
3. Golesculus is seen to reckon San Marco as consisting of two squares, one being that which extends in front of the basilica, the second facing the lagoon.
4. The paragraphs of text reproduced in italics are taken from Dinicu Golescu's Însemnare a călătoriii mele, published by Editura Eminescu in Bucharest in 1971.