domenica 26 giugno 2011

Lion of St. Mark

Venezia! Lion of St. Mark, Column of San Marco, Venice, Italy


Lions are scattered about Venice--if not in the flesh, then in countless paintings and sculptures. Mind you, there was a time when the cats of Venice weren't limited to tabbies, as Jan Morris tells us in A Venetian Bestiary:

"From the common cat (felis catus), the Venetians, their horizons enlarged by their imperial and commercial adventures, turned to the lion (leo leo), and were eventually besotted by him. Leo leo turned their heads! They built him onto their corbels, they slipped him into their allegories, they stuck him on gateposts, they made him the corner-stones of bridges. Citizens kept live lions in their gardens, and for a time a State Lion lived in a golden cage in the Piazza; he died, it is said, because licking the bars gave him gilt poisoning, and thereafter captive lions were forbidden for several centuries. When one turned up, though, at the Venetian Carnival of 1762, Pietro Longhi showed him grandly on display, with a little dog on his back, dancing dogs all around him, a monkey on a beam above, a fiddler fiddling, and the strolling Venetians engrossed as ever by his presence."

Why a lion, and not a seagull?

So why does a maritime city like Venice have a lion as its mascot? Wouldn't a seagull, a fish, or a duck from the marshy Venetian Lagoon be a more appropriate symbol?

The answer to that question lies in the Ninth Century, when--according to legend--two or three ambitious Chamber of Commerce types from Venice stole the remains of St. Mark the Apostle from his tomb in Alexandria, Egypt. William Lithgow tells the story in his "Comments on Italy" from The Rare Adventures and Painfull Peregrinations, published in 1614 and quoted in Ian Littlewood's Venice: A Literary Companion:

This Lion is in Verona Piazza delle Erbe

"They placed the corpse in a large basket covered with herbs and swine's flesh which the Musselmans [Muslims] hold in horror, and the bearers were directed to cry Khwazir (pork), to all who should ask questions or approach to search. In this manner they reached the vessel. The body was enveloped in the sails, and suspended to the mainmast till the moment of departure, for it was necessary to conceal this precious booty from those who might come to clear the vessel in the roads. At last the Venetians quitted the shore full of joy. They were hardly in the open sea when a great storm arose. We are assured that S. Mark then appeared to the captain and warned him to strike all his sails immediately, lest the ship, driven before the wind, should be wrecked upon hidden rocks. They owned their safety to this miracle."

After crossing the Mediterranean and cruising up the Adriatic, the graverobbers reached Venice and handed their cargo over to the Doge. The local religious and civic authorities quickly elected St. Mark as Venice's patron saint, and the apostle's traditional symbol--a winged lion--became the logo of the Venetian Republic.

Il Leone di Piazza Sa Marco a VENEZIA

Here a lion, there a lion, everywhere a lion lyin'.

One of the most famous winged lions in Venice is on the Torre dell'Orologio, the clock tower on the Piazza San Marco. Another stands atop a column in the Piazzetta, next to the Doge's Palace. The latter statue was hauled away to Paris by occupying Napoleonic troops in 1797, but it was returned to Venice in 1815.

If you visit the Doge's Palace, be sure to see Capaccio's painting of 1516 that shows a winged lion with a curiously humanoid face. The lion smiles at the observer while standing half on the mainland, half on the lagoon with the Doge's Palace and a fleet of sailing ships in the background.

There are plenty of other lions for leo leo lovers to enjoy. To quote A Venetian Bestiary again, "there are lions in the middle of dreadful meals, lions having their jaws wrenched open, lions with crowns on their heads, lions confronted by dragons, the lion that carries Minerva side-saddle in the public gardens, the eighteenth-century red marble lions of the Piazzetta dei Leoncini which seem specifically designed to let children ride them, the benignly simpering Byzantine lions that sustain the Tree of Life in the cathedral screen at Torcello."

Best of all, Venice's lions aren't real--so you can enjoy them without feeling guilty over the fact that the object of your attentions would be happier gnawing on a zebra in the African veldt.

Lion in Piazza San Marco - Venice

sabato 4 giugno 2011

Venetian cuisine (from Venice or Veneto)




Venetian cuisine (from Venice or Veneto)
Has a centuries-long history, and it is significantly different from the other cuisines of North Italy as well as neighbouring Austria and Slavic countries, despite having something in common with all these ones.
It may be divided into three main kinds of cuisine, the one in the coastal areas, the one in the plains, and the one in the mountain areas: the second one includes many local cuisines, having each city its own dishes.
The most common dish is polenta, which is cooked in various ways within the local cuisines of Veneto.
Coastal areas serve mainly seafood dishes, and its cuisine is common to Venice's one.
In the plains it is very popular to serve grilled meat (often by a barbecue, and in a mix of pork, beef and chicken meat) together with grilled polenta, potatoes or vegetables.
A very popular dishes is also risotto, rice cooked with many different kinds of food, from vegetables, mushrooms, pumpkin or radicchio to seafood, pork meat or chicken livers.
Bigoli (a typical Venetian fresh pasta, similar to a thicker kind of spaghetti), fettuccine (hand-made noodles), ravioli and the similar tortelli (filled with meat, cheese, vegetables or pumpkin) and gnocchi (potatoes-made fresh pasta), are fresh and often hand-made pasta dishes, served together with meat sauce (ragù) made by beef, horse, chicken or duck, sometime together with mushrooms or peas, or simply with melted butter.
Many kinds of meat such beef, pork, chicken, horse, donkey, rabbit, pheasant, duck or goose are very popular too.
Cuisine from the mountain areas is mainly made of pork or game meat, with polenta, as well as mushrooms or cheeses (made by cow milk), and some dish from Austrian or Tyrolese tradition such as canederli or strudel.
A typical dish is casunziei, hand-made fresh pasta similar to ravioli.
Among the typical seasoning of Venetian cuisine, you can find butter, olive oil, sunflower oil, vinegar, kren, senape, mostarda, salsa verde.
Here it is just some typical dish; you can also visit the page for Venetian language to learn more about writing and pronouncing dishes' names.

Rixi e bixi: a poor but tasty dish consisting of a simple risotto with pancetta and peas cooked in a broth.


A bottle and glass of Prosecco, which can be spumante (the more expensive extra frizzy) or frizzante (the cheaper frizzy).


Sardełe in saor: fired sardines, dipped in partially fried onion in the same oil in which they are fried sardines, raisins and pine nuts (traditionally only by winter to increase the calories), other spices and sprinkled with plenty of vinegar. One leaves everything to marinate at least one night.


Mołeche: small green species crabs (Carcinus maenas), when they arrived at the peak of phase changes and then soft, they are fried. The mołeche are very valuable because the process of changing the water brackish lagoons lasts a few hours, the armor back hard and immediately return to be called maxenete.


Rixoto de gò: rice prepared with goby (of the Gobius ophiocephalus species), also known as gò, typical fish of the Venetian Lagoon.


Pasta e faxioi: bean soup with noodles (typically long pasta rough).



Połenta e schie: small shrimp from the lagoon (gray mud, gray-brown from boiled), fried and perched on a bed of white polenta very soft.


Sepe al nero: cuttlefish cooked with their ink lagoon.


Fegato ała venesiana: a high-class Venetian plate of liver, chopped and cooked together with chopped onions.


Bigołi in salsa: bigoli pasta served with an anchovy and onion sauce.


Among the many Venetian desserts, the most well-known are: the fritołe (or frittelle), the baicołi (or baicoli), xałeti (or zaletti), the pinsa (or pinza), the gałani (or galani), and the fugasa (or focaccia).

TIRAMISU'

JAMIE OLIVER in VENICE Part 1


JAMIE OLIVER in VENICE Part 2

JAMIE OLIVER in VENICE Part 3


JAMIE OLIVER in VENICE Part 4