Sestière di Santa Croce

Second stop was Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Friary, that huge brick church famous for two Titian paintings and Titian’s burial place which is a very big marble memorial. There’s just too much to describe but first of all I have to say that as much as I love old European churches with their contrasts of complete simplicity or totally over-the-top bling, I really don’t love religious paintings regardless of famous painters. But there was enough bling to keep me happy and a once-over of the very large paintings was enough. https://www.basilicadeifrari.it/archivio-opere/

It’s still a working church with ornate side chapels, but some are simple too including the chapel for St Peter which had frescos discovered in 1990 having been covered up for about 500 years. And we saw St Peter again (there is a theme to this) in an altar piece, he’s second from the left in the painting. The main altar painting is by Titian, beautiful, surrounded by stained glass. The church was very quiet, everyone spoke in whispers. There were burials in the floor and the tombstones were wearing very smooth from centuries of footsteps.

They had a video playing about the restoration of some of the pieces and you could look out onto the cloisters, a very peaceful grassed area with a few flowers, marble columns.

It was raining again when we left so we shot into the closest restaurant for lunch, spoiling ourselves again, found ourselves in Taverna de Baffo with low lights, lots of wine bottles around the walls, musical instruments. Who was Baffo? We had to google him and found that he was:
‘The author of a corpus of over 1200 poems in Venetian. Despite being the author of a not small number of works against the corruption of his city, above all of the clergy, and on philosophical themes, Baffo remains known above all for his licentious compositions. One comment said he was ‘the greatest erotic poet ever, and at the same time, one of the greatest lyric poets’.
Interesting man by the looks of it. And the food was good too, emphasis on seafood so I had scallops gratin with grilled vegetables and Pete had seafood pasta………and a Bellini too, just because we could (again). They had Sam Smith playing in the background, I like his music.

We were aiming for the Mocenigo museum which looked to be a perfume and costume museum but wasn’t quite as expected https://mocenigo.visitmuve.it/it/il-museo/perco…, however it was interesting to see all the rooms with silk-hung walls, great swathes of silk drapes, painted ceiling beams, period furniture and china. The floors were all terrazzo, I think it’s quite ugly but it’s everywhere in Italy, old and new. There’s a room devoted to the Mocenigo family archives, 205 bound volumes dating back to the 11th century and much of their contents haven’t yet been studied. There were some costumes within the exhibits, and a room with several dozen embroidered waistcoats on display, but not as much as I’d hoped to see.

We were interested in a video about the perfume industry in Venice and this sums it up, quite amusing in parts https://www.seevenice.it/en/perfume-and-scents-… - people who smelled good were a bit suspicious a few centuries ago it seems. Soap was developed in Venice but stolen away by Marseille in the 16th century. There was a display of perfume ‘fixatives’, different smell combinations and one room had dried flowers and herbs on platters, what a delicious smell. Other displays were of perfume bottles, some of them so tiny including the blue bottle attached, it was less than 2cm tall.

Of course at the end there was the usual ‘exit through the shop’ and several testers of expensive perfumes, I had a couple of sprays of one called something like Essence of Venice (can’t remember exactly), I liked it but it was stronger than I’d realised and I walked around with quite a waft of it following me.

Pete’s knee was a bit tender and the rain persisted so we got a vaporetto to Rialto and walked back to the hotel – going past the Bank of Italia I noticed the guard with a rather large gun, no robberies going to happen there. The evening was very quiet, we binged the latest series of ‘Endeavour’ in front of a takeaway pizza from along the street, nice and relaxed. Actually I'm craving chicken or tomato soup and toast, I know what I'll be eating when we get home, that and marmite toast.Read more