Cimitero monumentale, San Michele (Venezia)
Photo by: Massimo (Jerry Drake)
Photo by: Massimo (Jerry Drake)
Walking In Circles Blog
2: Nel Mezzo del Cammin
From the Grave to the Cradle
Taking inspiration from Dante’s great opener on the universality of the mid-life crisis, this blog feed and walk explores interwoven routes reflecting the journey from birth to death in Venice, taking in the institutions that symbolise the ‘phases of life’: schools, professional guilds, religious orders and the like. It will meander via the four historical hospitals: Pietà (foundlings) Mendicanti or ‘Ospedaletto’ (Poor) Derelitti (Sick) Incurabili (Incurables or Syphilitic) before heading inevitably to San Michele, the island cemetery. I’ll be looking for signs in the urban landscape that reflect on death, life and everything in between throughout the ages.
Is the issue (and aesthetic) of the ‘abandoned’ cemetery solely a concern to northern European Protestants? No one is going to the cemetery anymore (click to read more)...
Some people In the Middle Ages believed that the plague was spread by ‘vampires’ which, rather than drinking people’s blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying (click to read more...)
To talk to the dead you have to be quick these days (click to read more)...
This plaque, placed in the dilapidated, soft-earthed cloisters on Lazzaretto Vecchio by artist Herman De Vries, reflects on the 1500 victims of plague and leprosy, buried in the communal trench that divides this minuscule island where the word 'quarantine' was invented (click to read more).
A short distance away from these objects of inauspicious birth I begin to see images of death: a more present force in infancy for those foundlings than today’s generation, but nevertheless still twisted into the same umbilical thread. Ti Morti: You (re) Dead (!). (Click to read more)
Google Translate gives us a damn sight funnier and less threatening version than the original curse on all parents that placed their infants on the foundling wheel. The carved plaque was originally adjacent and in clear sight of the desperate. It obliged them to pay (Click to read more)
The alley wall of the ritzy Metropole Hotel is a strange place to begin this blog feed about walking between life and death but all is not what it seems...(Click to read more)