Venice

It's easy to forgive Venice for its eternal preoccupation with its own beauty. All the picture books in the world won't prepare you for the city's exotic landmarks, among them the Basilica di San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale, rising like mirages from the lagoon. With sumptuous palaces and romantic waterways, Venice is straight out of an 18th-century Canaletto masterpiece. Venice is called La Serenissima (the "most serene" one), a reference to the monstrous power, majesty, and wisdom of this city that was for centuries the unrivaled mistress of trade between Europe and the Orient and the bulwark of Christendom against the tides of Turkish expansion. The most serene also refers to the way in which those visiting have looked upon Venice, a miraculous city imperturbably floating on its calm, blue lagoon.

Entirely built on water by men who dared defy the sea, Venice is unlike any other town. No matter how many times you have seen it in movies or TV commercials, the real thing is more surreal and dreamlike than you ever imagined. Its landmarks, the Basilica di San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale, seem hardly Italian: delightfully idiosyncratic, they are exotic mélanges of Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance styles. Sunlight shimmers and silvery mist softens every perspective here, a city renowned in the Renaissance for its artists' rendering of color. It is full of secrets, ineffably romantic, and -- at times -- given over entirely to pleasure.

Founded in the 5th century, Venice attained a peak of power and prosperity in the 15th and 16th centuries. For 400 years the powerful maritime city-republic had held sway, but after the 16th century the tide changed. The Ottoman Empire blocked Venice's Mediterranean trade routes, and newly emerging sea powers such as Britain and the Netherlands broke Venice's monopoly by opening oceanic trading routes. Like its steadily dwindling fortunes, Venice's art and culture began a prolonged decline, leaving only the splendid monuments to recall a fabled past, with the luminous paintings of Canaletto (1697-1768) and the beautiful frescoes of Giambattista Tiepolo striking a glorious swan song.