Venice, a Personal View

By (author) Andrea Baldeck

Book cover: Venice, a Personal View

Extent: 164 pages

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Museum

Subjects: Italian Studies

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(January 1999)

ISBN: 9781931707572

10.47 x 10 inches

Price: $45.00

In stock

Hardback (Published)

(January 1999)

ISBN: 9781931707565

10.47 x 10 inches

Price: $95.00

In stock

Poised in delicate, often hazardous balance with the liquid natural world the fabric of the man-made city rises out of the water and is reflected in it. The earth of Venice, a tissue of alluvial silt, is upheld and given form by a vast subterranean endoskeleton of wooden pilings supporting buildings of splendor with their feet in the mud. The air of Venice carries both heat and swells from North Africa’s deserts and envelops life like liquid gauze. And fire, the most volatile of the four elements, has both destroyed and redrawn swaths of the city and fed the industry and commerce of a trading nation.


Poised in delicate, often hazardous balance with the liquid natural world the fabric of the man-made city rises out of the water and is reflected in it. The earth of Venice, a tissue of alluvial silt, is upheld and given form by a vast subterranean endoskeleton of wooden pilings supporting buildings of splendor with their feet in the mud. The air of Venice carries both heat and swells from North Africa’s deserts and envelops life like liquid gauze. And fire, the most volatile of the four elements, has both destroyed and redrawn swaths of the city and fed the industry and commerce of a trading nation.

  • By (author) Andrea Baldeck