Venice Friday 16 May, Day 23

Another beautiful morning in Venice, and we caught the vaporetti with a bunch of determined looking Nonnas with market shopping trolleys. San Marco Square was already building up but the queue for the church was not too bad, and we discovered once we got inside that only a small percentage of people through the door go to the things that cost money. We headed up the stairs to the Museum, and saw in the round the famous, fabled Horses_of_Saint_Mark. They are believed to have been cast in 400 BC, were appropriated by the Eastern Roman empire, stood in the Hippodrome in Constantinople for almost a thousand years, before being carted off as part of the booty from the fourth crusade's sack of Constantinople, brought back to Venice before being carted off by Napoleon, then repatriated back to Venice. They have been around. And they have enormous presence. There are signs all round saying 'no photo', which everyone, including me, cheerfully ignored.  Here are the left pair.

The Treasury of Saint Marks is similarly composed largely of Byzantine chalices, reliquaries, incence boats and other extraordinary examples of Byzantine workmanship. The golden altarpiece, a huge panel of gold about 5 metres by 3 metres high, made about 500 ad, encrusted with jewels, 1500 pearls, 300 rubies, hundreds of emeralds, sapphires, and brilliant enamel panels, was also carted off from Constantinople.  Extraordinary the extent to which the Venetians have just appropriated so much, from Saint Mark himself onwards, and made it their own.

We caught a vaporetto back and after lunch Anne went off with the lovely lady who manages the hotel to the hairdressers, while I went to an exhibition of the machines of Leonardo Da Vinci which is on in San Barnabas Church round the corner. A very engaging exhibition of machines built from Da Vinci's drawings. A very hands on exhibition, where you could crank handles and get hammers to beat on anvil, pump water using his version of an Archimedes screw, and more. There is even a bicycle, but the provenance of the drawing is contested.

Watched the end of the 6th stage of the Giro, go Cadel and Michaela Matthews as the commentators here call him, then dinner and a stroll round the little streets, during which we saw a Venetian ambulace boat scooting down one of the tiny canals, lights flashing. Guess that makes sense, when there are no roads. What a wonderful place, not a single car.