PEOPLE AND PLACES: DAY ZERO
The Da Segna Home on Calle Donzella
Uberto's family house is located in the bustling northwest corner of San Polo sestiere, just a few streets from the Rialto Bridge. He choses to move here the moment his success allows, in the belief that he needs to get closer to where the real power in the city lies, just over the Canal in San Marco.
You can see the house, a rather grand four storey building in yellow paint, about thirty metres behind me, just above my left shoulder. Here is where Uberto, Donzella and their three adult children (Lucia, Collete and Sclavo) live. It's easy to imagine the reception rooms and living areas the house, with Malin coming and going as an honorary member of the family. The streets in this part of San Polo are quite wide, suggestive of a certain level of opulence in its late medieval residents. Funny to think the fish market is only a couple of streets away.
At this point in the day, we'd just rewarded ourselves with a three-scoop icecream on our walk from the nearby San Giacomo (we'd been on our feet for about an hour on the other side of the Canal in San Marco, on the first full day of our visit, and were already finding the heat here somewhat different from that we'd left in Edinburgh Airport the day before i.e. there was some). In my right hand you can see the crumpled icecream tub that I would be holding for quite some time after this stop, the shortage of public bins in the city becoming a permanent source of anxiety.
The man you see standing at the junction, his wares at his feet, was just one of the many dozens we walked past on our travels, seeking to sell the most garish of toys to those grownups hardy or foolish enough to drag their young children around the streets with them. "Not exactly Disneyland, is it", Joanne observed, as each shuffling, bored and scowling child passed us on streets featuring little to nothing to hold their attention.
She also claimed, after watching the fifth or sixth vendor throwing the gunky lurid mound of shaped plastic to the ground, only to see it magically transform back into its original but profoundly unattractive shape, that she could do at least as good a job herself. "He's doing my job", she claimed each time we passed one of these men (and they were always men). I stopped at nothing to dissuade her from such a shift in career or ambition.
Campo and Chiesa San Giacomo
This small square sits just a few metres south of the Rialto Bridge, in the sestiere of San Polo. It's where the Da Segna family gathers the day before Malin arrives in Venice, having travelled in some peril along the Ruga Dei Oresi (seen extending to the left of the picture). The Rialto Market is out of frame to the right, accessible though the portico on the west side of the Campo.
The church itself is quite small by the standards of many others in the city. It's possible, even before walking inside, to imagine its impact on Uberto when he returns to worship here after his heady times on the Council, and the even headier environs of St. Marks.
Once walking through the heavy wooden doors, I glanced several times at the smartly dressed attendant, positioned to ensure no opportunity for the place to make money from its visitors, or to chastise them for dressing or behaving in any manner suggesting indifference to the long Christian tradition of the place, would be lost.
I did everything I could, short of causing a public nuisance, to ensure that she noted the required removal of my sunhat, and the discrete way in which I obtained this sole shot of the interior.
