Venice

Views of the city of lagoons and gondolas; Henry James was passionate: ''You desire to embrace it, to caress it, to possess it...'', whereas Mark Twain found St Mark''s ''so ugly...Propped on its long row of thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, it seems like a vast, warty bug taking a mediaeval walk.'' Reactions to Venice have been, throughout the ages, astonishingly different. John ...