The great Cees Nooteboom pays tribute to the beauty and history of Venice in this gorgeous tome that is part travel narrative and part history lesson.

Nooteboom does a wonderful job of leading the reader around the labyrinthine city of Venice as though acting as both tour guide and history professor, giving equal attention to the long ago art, politics, and daily life of Venice and its appeal for the modern visitor.

The photography for this book is exceptionally good (especially for something that is part travel narrative), likely because it was shot by the author’s wife, a gifted photographer whose work brings her husband’s words to life visually.

This one is well worth a read if you plan to visit Venice, though it’s of course a bit hefty to be taking along on your travels. I’ve been to the city several times and studied its art and history in graduate school, and I still felt like I learned a lot from this.

Venice is on my bucket list. But not so much this book. Lord, there is a lot of information! Can't say it isn't a homage to the city (and deservedly so), but too, too much for me. I'll read it all eventually, I suppose, but it just plods and gets bogged down in too much detail for my tastes. I'd bet, though, that big time fans of the city will love this book. Just not for me.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found Venice as a book quite.. tedious. The text is very dense and the writing style isn't consistent that you can get through a couple of essays and fall into a predictable rhythm. The research and the content is spectacular, as are some of the shorter essays. The author's love for Venice is clear and palpable, but for someone unfamiliar with the location, it's not necessarily the most comprehensive but rather rambly and voluble with little context. It's endearing to think about an old man walking Venice end to end to find interesting things, but the writing doesn't readily yield to that image.

I presume if you can get through swathes of dense prose, lots of tangents, and want to understand Venice better from a European traveler's perspective, you'll enjoy it. I personally had to force myself to finish it for this review.

Mediocre book. It struggled to hold my interest and the pictures were so-so, matching my feelings of the city itself. Perhaps best for someone with a lot of spare time to really engage with the book or who really loves Venice.

This was a treatise on Venice - not just a travel memoir. It dealt with history, geography, philosophy and the social interactions of not just present times but also those of the past.

The story of Venice, its people, the tourists, those who work for the tourists but are grudging in their appreciation of what they bring, the feeling that it is all in "their" favour and actual Venetians are being ignored. It is all there.
Then you get to the actual Venice, the islands, the outer islands, the lesser known canals, the lesser known churches (my gosh there are churches and churches). I doubt I'd get anything done at all. I'll be going from one to another, because each one has its own history, its own riches of paintings, its own saint and followers. I could go on.

The book was a fascinating one. On of course a fascinating subject.

In the time of a pandemic the only safe travel is armchair travel through the eyes and experiences of another. Author Nooteboom takes the reader to Venice time and time again in the wonderful travel memoir that is Venice: The Lion, the City, and the Water. The author first visited Venice in 1964 and has returned ten times for stays that are much longer than the average American tourist. I have visited Venice three times so far and many of Nooteboom’s recollections struck a memory chord of mine.
Memories so well told as the early morning walks as the boats of vegetables and fish arrive at the market, the symphony of footsteps as the day nears an end, a visit to an early morning mass with a group of Venetian faithful as they have gathered together for 1500 years. There are impressions of canals, neighboring islands and architecture as personal and lyrical as only a poet like the author can tell. The author’s visits also tell of the seasons in Venice especially late fall and late winter.
I particularly enjoyed the author’s own reading list about Venice from such contemporary novelists as Donna Leon and Michael Dibdin to Venetian visitors of long ago like Mark Twain and Henry James. There are recollections of painters and their paintings that have impressed, museums, special exhibitions and churches all rendered in well told tales. A “nation of statues lives in Venice” each with its own history.
A visit to Venice and this book is highly recommended.

A solid 4 stars, perhaps even a 4.5. Be forewarned, this is not a guidebook. Rather, it is an artistic portrait of a beloved city. Drawing upon concrete "evidence" in the form of paintings, statues, written history, meanderings, Venice is a beautifully written book by an author who clearly loves Venice. The prose is both lyrical and descriptive, at times meandering, as Cees takes on various experiences during his numerous trips to the island city. In reviewing the book, I have relied more heavily than usual on direct quotations – the language is beautiful and expresses so well Venice itself, the author’s love of the city, and the juxtaposition of past and present. I hope the excerpts provide a window into the author’s mind as well as a foretaste of how the book is written. In addition to the prose, there are a number of photographs in the book … less your typical “tourist” photographs than artistic shots designed to evoke a mood and in this they are successful.

Some readers may likely find the book tedious and, indeed, the author writes, “…there are limits to the art of description these days, related to the new reader’s patience … Now that I am standing here, I see how difficult it is to do what the nineteenth century was still able to do without any shame: to describe, in minute detail, our impressions of what can be seen.” And, “…you cannot write like that any longer, touched by symbolism and Impressionism, slow and a little sultry, with all manner of little touches to convey every possible nuance of the light, or of the water, or of a work of art, but I can still read like that, because by reading Couperus I am still in the same city, and yet a century earlier, a city in which a scent of the recently vanished fin de siecle still lingers, a slower and more leisurely Venice. …the generation of smartphones and iPads requires a different pace, fewer words, less ornamentation, and that makes the city a different one, as a change in language also implies a change in seeing.”

The author returns on a regular basis to explore different aspects of Venice. Sometimes it is museums and various paintings, sometimes churches, sometimes the outlying islands, sometimes the cafes, sometimes politics … each visit takes approaches Venice from a different perspective with different colors, sounds, smells. Interwoven with descriptions of Venice are stories of the people who have inhabited the island, from early explorers to more modern residents.

Cees frames his story with memories of his own interlaced with memories of various authors writing about Venice through the ages. Couperus, Montale (poet, who interviewed Hemingway in 1954), John Julius Norwich (historian), Kafka and others. There are stories of religious figures through the ages – often told through various paintings.

The author speaks of tourists – in many ways a necessary evil – the similarities between his native city of Amsterdam and his beloved Venice. “ … I understand even better what Venetians think, tourists, particularly when they walk along in lines following a flag, are a plague that must be endured, just like the abhorrently large boats in which they advance between Giudecca and Dorsoduro for their one divine day, when they will be able to spend all their time photographing what they will never see again. Between their gaze and the city there will always be a mobile phone or some other device that shows their own face with, behind them, the city they so wanted to see.” In many ways, the book is a commentary not only on Venice, but on modern life and how we have lost the ability to see in a fuller sense.

In asking himself why he continues to return to Venice over and over again: “Why have I returned for the umpteenth time? What is, in fact, the attraction? … The first answer would be because I have not yet finished Venice, but this is nonsense … The past is a dimension of the present … and when I walk around here in the present I am simultaneously in that other dimension. Could that be it? Am I living backwards, against the flow of time? In a city like this, you are surrounded by dead people who have left something behind, palazzos, bridges, paintings, pictures, the air is saturated with them.”

And in closing, “I have been traveling around the world for more than fifty years, but I have always come back, a special form of homesickness. And yet I have never chosen to live here, perhaps because all my life I have felt as if I have never truly lived anywhere. But then what is it that makes you love this place more than other places? I try to think about it and get no further than the word peculiar, in the sense of special, one of a kind. This city is incomparable, its history, people, buildings, but it is not the individual buildings, events, characters, it is the totality, the accumulation of very big and very small things. It is the city itself, it is the people who have made her, this absurd combination of power, money, genius and great art. First they claimed their city from the lagoon, then they drifted out across the great oceans beyond, returning again and again to the city that was their home, always protected by the wise, wide water, often so still and yet sometimes so dangerous …”

This book swept me back into Venice, a city that lives in my heart, and then quietly took me back to the quieter, smaller places and sites that I love. The author has been lucky enough to have made numerous visits, while I’ve been three times, the last time staying for 19 days. We loved wandering all parts of the city during different times of day, so this book was a joy, especially during covid lockdown when we can’t travel. Things that particularly resonated with me were his visit to Torcello and it’s Catherdral ( my favorite if I had to settle on just one), the history of the Doges and the lions, and the small things, a coffee at a small coffee bar, the laundry hanging, the call of oy as a gondoliers makes a corner, and the never ending church bells. We loved a good ‘treasure hunt’, looking for small churches our Venetian friends pointed us towards, or the plaque noting the home of the later Zen(o) brothers, explorer descendants of a Doge. I read my advance copy on my iPad kindle app so I could see his illustrations in color, frequently switching the page to look up a painting he was describing, or to check a map for a location.
A love story to Venice that will thrill anyone who shares the author’s feelings, thank you to Cees Nooteboom, NetGalley, and Yale University Press for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

Venice is a very personal and lyrical homage to a city the author clearly loves. Do not expect a linear travelogue even though there are masses of descriptions of the many famous and many not so famous sites of this great city. There is whimsy, there is pathos, there is humour and there is drama. The author incorporates the observations of many other visitors as we as his own subjective take.

Having been to Venice twice, but not for the extended time of the author nor the frequency of the trips, I found myself reliving some of the places and emotions that I felt. Even with the double visits, I did get lost while reading- as you can become so easily in the actual city- as we get to peek into some very obscure corners. It is a city that lends itself to confusion as it is so easy to set off for a destination but get turned around in the mazes of its streets and bridges. I think, however, the reader will benefit from having set foot in Venice.

There is no other place like Venice. It is sad that it is sinking but wonderful that the flood gates that have been installed recently seem to be helping in the decline. We should relish her while we may. There is no doubt the author does.

Four purrs and two paws up.

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A beautifully written love letter to the magical city of Venice. I have only been to Venice twice but as my daughter claimed it was the first place she visited that totally exceeded her expectations. Nooteboom writes about histories of squares, walking alleys and pathways, seeing statues and gondolas. I particularly love his description of paintings and artists whether in churches or at the Accademia.

I wished for the book to have more photos especially of the art but I could go online for some named. And I would have appreciated a map to find some of the places mentioned. The words and descriptions are the focus. This isn't a tourist guidebook, but a book for those who want a deeper remembrance of the city of bridges.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review. A side note is the photos did not format well with my Kindle version with several being upside down. I am sure that will be fixed by publication.

Venice. Only six letters but when arragenged thusly so evocative, so powerful. Cees Nooteboom writes with such insight and wisdom after countless visits and stays and captured exactly what Venice is to me as well. Each time I visit all my senses are overwhelmed. That first visit...oh, what majesty!...was so mind blowing my heart ached and tears flowed. Subsequent visits have maybe lost that first-time shock but are as wondrous as it is incredible to experience things you think you've seen but really haven't. You just can't take it all in at once, even in one extended visit. You need time between being away before returning and then your stomach ties itself into glorious knots all over again! The author captures and conveys this intensity so beautifully.

"Venice, always the same, always different." Exactly. Venice is steadfast and fiercely loyal in her power to awe yet softens and changes depending on what you are seeking, the time of day, the weather, the season, your willingness (hopefully!) to get lost...and not to simply see but...see.

"A day of small things." Yes! Venice is all about the small things, the details you may easily overlook as you see the big things. The ancient sewer covers, the billowing laundry, the boys playing soccer on a tiny square, spontaneous eruption of song, playful raucous shouts at the fish market, early garbage pickup by boats. My first several trips were about the big but after that became about the small as well.

I love that the author frequently mentions other writers. He also talks about the stupendous paintings, sculptures (especially the lion!), opera, narrow alleyways, gardens, mooring posts, Jewish cemetary, islands, aqua alta and gondolas (I have STILL not been on a gondola ride!). Like the author, when in a church filled with Italians singing, my heart aches and I get completely lost and feel absolutely connected.

"How little time does it take our brains to judge another person? How swiftly does the gaze of a Venetian register that I am a foreigner?" I used to wonder that, too, before living in Europe and now understand.

Not only do we get multitudinous fascinating anecdotes but simultaneously history lessons, seamlessly intertwined and told by prose and photography.

But you needn't know or have visited Venice to read this marvelous book. All you need is curiosity, a thirst for knowledge or a dream. Do seek this out for inspiration.

My sincere thank you to Yale University Press and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this remarkable book in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated.