Eternal Romance In Venice

Among the world's most romantic cities, Venice has always been a brooding heartthrob. In a rare moment of quiet, long-time admirer Stanley Stewart returns to have the whole place to himself.

- Stanley Stewart

Some years ago, we were young and in love, and there were trains from London's Victoria S that took us everywhere, including Venice. We went to Paris and Madrid, to Rome and Berlin. We crossed Europe at night, eating in dining cars as mountains floated by, lying in dark compartments as the lights of unseen stations rippled across the walls, waking to undiscovered cities and the aroma of coffee and pastries and the sense that the world was a grand sprawling mansion, and someone had just lent us the keys.

It was in those times that we first came to Venice, which proved to be the best of all those journeys. The memories of that first visit are like a series of old photos. Smoking cigarettes on a bridge late at night, the city asleep, the canal beneath us trembling with reflections. Having the world's most delicious risotto in a tiny restaurant near Campo San Polo. Taking the boat to Torcello for the Byzantine mosaics of the basilica and for a lunch at Cipriani's (locandacipriani.com) that lasted all afternoon. Losing our bearings in a maze of alleys in Cannaregio, in the days before Google Maps, when you could be happily lost. We were excited about paintings and travel and food and love, and most of all about one another. That particular life is a memory but Venice remains, and I have been back, at other moments, in other times. Venice is irresistible, and it is always different. It is not a city, it is a world, and on each visit you get to discover new territories.

Sometimes, it is the lagoon, where islands wax and wane with the tides, and you can cycle to the end of the Lido, where sea and sky converge. Another time it could be the Biennale (