It is the result of many weeks of patient but pleasant study of Venice itself. Everything here set down has been verified by personal observation, and is based upon the reading of scores of works of travel and biography. It is the Venice I know in the real life of the present and in the literature of the past; and to me it is Venice from its best and most interesting side.
The Queen of the Adriatic is peculiarly poor in local guide-books and in local maps. In the former are to be found but slight reference to that part of Venice which is most dear to the lovers of bookmen and to the lovers of books; and the latter contain the names of none but the larger of the squares, streets, and canals, leaving, in many instances, the searcher after the smaller thoroughfares entirely afloat in the Adriatic, with no compass by which to steer.
The stranger in Venice, accustomed to the nomenclature of the streets and the avenues, the alleys and the courts, of the cities and towns with which he is familiar in other parts of the world, may be interested to learn that here a large canal is called a Rio, or a Canale; that a Calle is a street open at both ends; that a Rio Terrà is a street which was once a canal; that a Ramo is a small, narrow street, branching out of a larger one; that a Salizzada is a wide, paved street; that a Ruga is just a street; that a Rughetta, or a Piscina, is a little street; that a Riva is a narrow footway along the bank of a canal; that a Fondamenta is a longer and a broader passage-way, a quay, or an embankment; that a Corte is a court-yard; that a Sottoportico is an entrance into a court, through, or under, a house—that which in Edinburgh is called a Pend, and in Paris a Cité; that a large square is a Piazza; that a small square is a Piazzetta, or a Campo; that a small campo is a Campiello; that a plain, commonplace house is a Casa; that a mansion is a Palazzo; that an island is an Isola; that a bridge is a Ponte; that a tower is a Campanile; that a ferry is a Traghetto; that a parish is a Parrochia; and that a district is a Contrada, or a Sistiere.
Armed with this information, the readers must do the rest for themselves.
To Mrs. Clara Erskine Clement, to Miss Henrietta Macy, to Mrs. Walter F. Brown, to Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, to Dr. Alexander Robertson, to Mr. William Logsdail, I owe my thanks for much valuable information given me while I was enlarging, elaborating, and revising the article, printed in Harper’s Magazine for July, 1896, upon which this volume is based.
Laurence Hutton.
Casa Frolo,
50 Giudecca.