All tagged Venice

Communing With The Dead

For Bobbi Lerman, a visit to a graveyard is an opportunity to stop and sit and listen to the stories of the dead. In this essay, Bobbi shares the experience of communing with the dead at Isola di San Michele, the island just across the water from Venice, Italy, that houses the city’s cemetery.

Searching for Shakespeare

by Jean Kepler Ross

Venice. I was waiting for a traghetto gondola to ferry me across the Grand Canal when I spied a building plaque indicating that the palazzo in front of me was the home of Desdemona, the tragic heroine of Shakespeare’s “Othello.” I didn’t have time to check it out on that trip, but it fired my imagination and I did some research. Desdemona’s home is traditionally set at Palazzo Contarini Fasan, a private home, but now I must go back to see what I can of this home with the plaque. I’ve already been to the Doge’s Palace on Saint Mark’s Square, the Rialto Bridge and the Jewish Ghetto to breathe in the scenes of “The Merchant of Venice.”