At sunset, from the north wall of the Arsenale, there is a clear and unexpected view of pink and distant snowy mountains.
In the museum of antiquities in Padua, the skeletons of a cavalryman buried with his horse two thousand five hundred years ago, the man’s head fossilized now against what was once perhaps the cushion of the horses neck.
In Giotto’s Scrovegni chapel, also in Padua, a sunbeam slants across the panel depicting the Lamentation and catches their haloes.
… and three more
Just before nine in the morning, two minutes walk to the east of the Piazza San Marco, a well dressed young man’s handsome face suddenly takes on a childish smile and he hopscotches along the flagstones … perhaps the primary school we just passed in the last street is his old one.
Following only ten yards behind him, a much taller man sways like a dancer as he balances two heavy polystyrene cases of fish on his head, stabilised there in their onward trajectory with an inch-thick ring of cloth.
Later, I step through the double-glazed door on to our balcony in my best pyjamas. It is mid afternoon. On the opposite bank of the Fondamenta San Lorenzo, the young waitress standing in the doorway of the Trattoria al Greci glances up, her face a question mark. I bend down in to the shadow behind the balustrade and then hold up for her to see the bottle of prosecco I’d left to cool there last night. She smiles and confirms her understanding with a double thumbs-up.
