The island of
Torcello
Jpg: Philip
Resheph
From: timeout.com
The motonave only
takes a few minutes
to steam over to Torcello, the sprawling, marshy island where the
history
of Venice began. At low tide, you could well imagine yourself in
the Fens or the Camargue, and there are certainly as many
mosquitoes.
Torcello today is a
rural backwater
with a population of barely 100; it is difficult to believe that
in the fourteenth century there more than 20,000 people living here.
This
was the first settlement in the lagoon, founded in the fifth century by
the citizens of the mainland Roman town of Altino.The cathedral of
Santa
Maria Assunta dates from AD 638 and is the oldest building on the
lagoon.
Successive waves of emigration from Altino were sparked off by
barbarian
invasions, first by Attila and his Huns, and later, in the seventh
century,
by the Lombards or `long beards'. But Torcello's dominance of the
lagoon
did not last: Venice itself was found to be more salubrious
(malaria
was rife on Torcello) and more easily defendable. Even the bishop of
Torcello
chose to live on Murano - in the palace that now houses the glass
museum.
But past decline is present charm, and rural Torcello is a great
antidote to the pedestrian traffic jams around San Marco. Add the
pull of two extremely fine churches and a couple of good
restaurants,
and it's easy to see why the Torcello experience is a perennial tourist
favourite. (Timeout)
Sixty people live
on Torcello today.
The big attraction is the basilica, which dates from 1008, the apse
mosaic
(below, 13th-century), and the alleged throne of Attila the Hun .
(Philip Greenspun)
Notes:
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