Venice Venice

Red Lanterns, Giudecca

The Fondamenta Zattere, looking across to the Giudecca, late February. The lamp post is one of a line of identical posts along this waterfront, each with the same red-paned lanterns. At this hour — just after the sun has gone but while the sky still holds colour — they read against the lagoon as a kind of punctuation.

Across the water, the Redentore. Palladio's church was built, like La Salute, as a plague votive — an earlier plague, 1576. The dome resolves into a silhouette at this hour. The city accumulates these vows against catastrophe; every major church is standing in the place of something that went wrong.