All City

Venice is uncompromisingly all city. This working-for-a living, going-about-its-business city in the water mesmerizes us. 50 generations have shaped this intensely urban life, unmodernized by the car, with an enviable quality of life. A self-governing republic for 1,000 years, the public square organizes daily life for the Venetians and we find a vantage point to watch it unfold at the Campo Santa Margherita in the Dorsoduro district.

Our first encounter with Santa Margherita happens one afternoon as we are walking in that general direction and pass 30 or so elementary school aged children being met by their parents at the end of the school day. What in most communities is a line of cars parked out front is instead a gaggle of young and old picking each other out in a public gathering sort of way. We skirt pass them having now become experts in avoiding crowds and continue on to the square ready for our afternoon Campari and soda (Alan) and glass of bubbly Prosseco (Debi).

Within minutes, the square transforms as its residents arrive. There are pick up soccer games,

teenage boys looking at teenage girls,

scratches and bumps being tending to,

young love in bloom,

and elders enjoying the scene.

Loving the way the community has claimed this square as its own, we decide to come back and see what the early morning hours are like. Alan orders his espresso and a machietto for me (somewhere along this trip I have begun to drink real-leaded espresso for the first time in my life) and we take our seats facing the campo and watch an ordinary Venetian morning of people off to work, off to school or early morning grocery shopping.

The evening transforms the square once again. Grandstand seats are brought in, lights strung, and a net and scoreboard put up for the girls’ high school volleyball game. Even if you did not see the posters announcing the event, you are drawn out of your home by the cheering crowd.

Campi are the least decorated parts of town because most of the beautiful homes face the water. But in their plainness, they become teeming with life.