A FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE GARDENS OF VENICE
This was the first article we published on the blog on 18 May 2012. A few days before, when I was watching Venice from the Campanile di San Marco, I recalled a few things my father, an architect, had told me about Venice.
Seeing Venice and the Lagoon from the Campanile often starts or "wraps up" a visit to Piazza San Marco. Even more so when you are visiting Venice for the first time! But there's so much more than just admiring the view or getting oriented. A visit to the Campanile can be a journey back in time. In this post you’ll discover five important gardens so essential for Venice, seen from the Campanile.
You will see, each part of Venice and each island had a function to fulfill and role to play in history. The same is true for the botanical and spice gardens of which Venice counted more than 500 in the year 1501. Many of them can also be seen in the map drawn by Jacopo de Barbari.
View from the Campanile di San Marco with San Francesco della Vigna church, campanile and gardens.
To tell the history of Venice in four sequences, seen from the Campanile, let’s start in the northern direction:
Panorama Nord - 3000 BC - 1000 AD: Secret Ancestors - From our unknown origins towards growth.
The north is where our ancestors coming from the Levant settled. From here, on Torcello, our Lagoon was urbanized between 300 - 1200 AD. Legend has it that the inhabitatns of Altino fled to the safety of the Lagoon after the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD, in particular to Torcello but also to Santa Cristina and Ammiana. In order to survive and pay for the goods needed not available in marshy Lagoon, they created "gardens of white gold", large salt pans. Salt was the first resource enabling Venetians to start trading and thus survive.
The first monasteries were created here, growing fruit, vegetables and aromatic herbs, such as San Francesco del Deserto, San Francesco della Vigna and San Zanipolo.
The gardens of San Francesco della Vigna are indeed special: To this day, una vigna (vineyard) and an orchard is being cultivated by the monks of the convent. In the western corner of their garden, la Cappella di San Marco is located. According to legend, Saint Mark sought refuge from a thunderstorm in this part of the archipelago, which would later become Venetia (Venice). This garden is a wonderful example to envisage the times when the city was filled with vineyards and spice (!) gardens to ensure self-sufficient life in the midst of the salt marshes of the Lagoon.
The gardens of Sant’Elena on the ancient island Olivolo
Panorama Est – 1000 – 1400 AD: We are growing – The Merchants of Venice are building a Spice Empire
By 1000 AD, settlers began moving towards the Isole Realtine, the 118 islands that make up Venice. And ships had to be built to provide Venice and the formerly independent Lagoon settlements like Torcello with a living.
Looking out from the panoramic window towards the east has always been my favorite. Not just because my family’s home can be seen from there. This direction makes me think and dream of a prosperous, growing Venice. Trading salt with the east, the Levant. Here, the boats arriving from the East were moored, delivering goods to the Levantine merchants residing right behind Riva degli Schiavoni. Schiavonia means Dalmatia in Venetian, by the way.
And from here, you can see the Arsenal where those Venetian ships sailing East were built. And just beyond, another forgotten garden, those of the church and convent of Sant’Elena, is located: Today, it is a large vineyard north of the Biennale gardens.
Sant’Elena is located on the mythical island Olivolo, next to the ancient cathedral of Venice, San Pietro. Elena (Helena) was the mother of the Byzantine emperor Constantine, and being buried here is a sign that Venice has always, must and will always, find orientation in the Levant (East), as my father the architect used to say. This area of Venice looks east, towards the bocca di porto del Lido, from where the Venetian cogs sailed to the Levant along the Adriatic coast. This part of Venice, sestiere di Castello, symbolizes the perennial connection of Venice with her Levantine origins.
Panorama Sud – 1400 – 1800 AD: Politics and Venice – Peak time, ups and downs and fall of the Republic
Now turn south and view how history evolved: Islands were given to new settlers in the Lagoon, who arrived after the economic force of Venice was seriously weakened in the course of three pandemics.
For example, Venetians built homes on the Lido for Armenian immigrants in 1717. Quarantine islands were created in the Lagoon where the merchants had to stop for forty days before being allowed into the city. Hospitals were created on the islands. San Lazzaro degli Armeni was originally a quarantine island, as was San Servolo.
And there’s the long island called Giudecca, originally home to large orchards. There’s a special one which can be seen from the Campanile, today it’s called Giardino Eden.
In 1884, Frederic Eden, a great-uncle of the British Prime Minister Anthony Eden and his wife Caroline, sister of the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, bought the garden which had belonged to the Sisters of Santa Croce. It’s Venice's largest private garden, currently closed to the public as it was owned by Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. A long story and a mythical garden, that we’ll cover soon!
Panorama West – 1797 to this day: Showdown, Sundown and / or Mapping our Future
We have entered a different age by now looking west. After the fall of the Republic in 1797, in the 19th century, production facilities looking rather alien popped up in Venice, financed by foreigners as Venice had become quite impoverished. Her ancient heart and economical structure based on the spice trade had ceased to exist on 12 May 1797.
A garden in the western part of Venice created in 1834 is called Giardino Papadopoli. Filled with Medterranean oaks and laurel trees, it’s an English-style landscape garden with Mediterranean elements and tulip beds in spring. Also, you can admire its wisteria, which arrived in Venice only in 1854.