a city of miracles

The city itself was built upon water by celestial decree. It was a miracle, in itself, to build upon the sea. Thus it became a city of miracles. Everywhere in the Venetian chronicles there is a great and shining image of the city. Venice became part of the history of human redemption...Venice was idealised beyond any recalcitrant historical fact or inglorious episode.


Yet the real origins of Venice, scattered or random as they are, vouchsafe a great truth about the city. They convey certain characteristics, or certain qualities, to the nature of life there. Every organic thing wishes to give form and expression to its own nature; and so, by obscure presentiment and by the steady aggregate of communal desires, Venice took shape. The statue is latent in the marble...There was a constant preoccupation, among all sections of the community, with stability and continuity. Where are those qualities more necessary than in a place shifting and uncertain? A city created by exiles became, over the centuries, a home for many and various refugees...By the tenth century it was already known as "la civitas Rivoalti," civitas implying a citizen state.


The great and enduring fact, however, was the fight against the sea. Out of this arose the need for common purpose and community of effort. There was no antagonism between the individual and the collective or, rather, the Venetian individual through the centuries subsumed himself or herself within the organism as a whole. It is an organism that, like the human organism, can be seen as a unity. It obeys its own laws of growth and change. It has an internal dynamism. It is more than the sum of its parts. Each aspect of Venetian culture and society reflects the whole.

Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd

In short, this is everything I miss about this city. I would go back in a heartbeat. I've been missing it, and my friends and professors from there, a lot lately. My time there was so rejuvenating, so revelatory, that I think my longing for the city will never quite go away, even though I know I can never recreate my previous experience there. I wouldn't want to recreate it, though. I think Venice would reveal a new kind of magic with each visit, and I can't wait for the day I go back.