The pigeons of Venice

What do you call someone from Venice who can't see? A Venetian blind! I'm here all day, folks. Obviously, Venetian blinds didn't originate in Venice (actually Persia; Venetian traders in the 1700s bought them back to Venice and Paris – the French still refer to their country of origin by calling them les persienes), just as, say, Jerusalem artichokes aren't from Jerusalem (nor are they even artichokes). Anyway, I digress.

We arrived in the medina that is Venice at about two in the morning. Wondering aimlessly around the maze of alleyways trying to find our hotel, I naturally thought of Don't Look Now, and told H if she sees a little girl in a red raincoat, Don't Follow Her.

Is there anywhere else like Venice in the world? A city with no cars! With roads made of water! It's simultaneously antiquated and futuristic (cars – driverless or flying Blade Runner-style – do not figure in my vision of the future at all), though climate change doesn't make the future for Venice look great – it'll be like Atlantis in years to come.

Which, in a roundabout kind of way, is why we went. H and I had wanted to see Damien Hirst's (no, never been a fan of his before) Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition all year and finally got a cheap deal in November. The exhibition has received mixed reviews but there was no doubting the boldness of vision. Ten years in the making, costing millions of pounds, employing 250 craftsmen in 5 countries and housed in two galleries, this was art as blockbuster movie (I wasn't even going to mention this, but I will. Yes he employs people to execute his art! Like a film director does! Like Michelangelo did! Like Jeff Koons does! Enough!).

A year ago, almost to the day, we'd seen the British Museum's 'blockbuster' show, Sunken cities: Egypt’s lost worlds, the tale of two 'lost' ancient Egyptian cities recently 'rediscovered'. I'd been underwhelmed by it all, but more than that – and I said as much to H at the time – I felt all the artefacts looked too new, and possibly, well, fake (we all mock modern art by saying it's only called art because it's in a gallery; very rarely do we question the veracity of a museum). Though Hirst's exhibition was planned years before the British Museum's, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable felt like a personal affront to Sunken Cities.

Before I went to the exhibition, I wasn't altogether clear on the story. Did Damien really find treasure off the coast of East Africa, and then doctor it – Chapman Brothers-style – with Mickey Mouse and Mowgli? Or was it all a hoax? The clue's in the exhibition title, the anagrammatically-named Cif Amotan II ('I am fiction', the wealthy freed slave from 100AD whose treasure this is) and, well, actually visiting the exhibition. Even though there is a strikingly similar and realistic documentary (or mockumentary, if you will) to the Sunken Cities one of divers finding the treasure haul in the depths of the ocean when you enter the exhibition, it very soon becomes apparent that it's all fake (though not fake art but fake news). Okay, it's a hoax but an amazing one.

There are one hundred artefacts, from drawings and sculptures to jewellery and weapons, some the size of a building, some the size of a fingernail. There are sculptures of serpents and beasts, of Kate Moss and Mickey Mouse, Rihanna an an Egyptian goddess, made from marble, stone, bronze, silver and gold, all encrusted with barnacles and coral. There is a mash up of cultures and religions – Egyptian, pre-Columbian, Buddhism. It has to be seen to be (un)believed.

We'd spent half a day at the two Hirst galleries, but there was other art everywhere in Venice. Not just the city itself – the churches and palaces, the beautifully crumbling buildings – but the Venice Biennale, the bi-annual arts festival which consumes the city. Everywhere we looked was free art – in abandoned buildings and churches (my advice to anyone visiting Venice: when you're in a building, any building, always look up – the ceiling will invariably be stunning) as well as the two main locations: the Central Pavilion and Arsenale. For these it was 25€ for a day pass, but worth every cent. We were there from 12 til 6 and had only seen probably half of the art on display. Some was crap, some was amazing (my own idea for an installation in the city was to have hundreds of balloons in the shape of a lion with wings – the symbol of Venice – floating around one of the churches). Just about every country in the world is represented in every kind of media – even painting! And hardly any female nudes, that fine tradition of the male gaze in western art for the last five hundred years, but lots of cocks.

As an aside from all the art and beauty (sigh; it gets so overwhelming, day after day), we did stumble across other stuff. Like a charity shop. I was hoping it to be full of cut price Tintorettos and designer wear – some Prada garb for 50 cents etc. Alas, no. The very persuasive old woman working there forced me to try on a horrible 1970s blue-patterned cardigan, which I did, before taking it off again immediately and walking out the shop. That didn't stop her from chasing after me down the street, waving the cardigan in the air and shouting Italian in my direction. (A note on the Venetian old ladies: they're stunning! And ballsy! Compared to shrivelling old English women, all beige, afraid and shuffling along, senior Italian ladies are stylish and loud.)

I thought there was no way we'd ever find the Libreria Acqua Alta bookshop I'd heard about, but H found it (she's on a par with my brother in map-reading skills but also has the female intuition thing going on) down a dark alleyway one evening (and even managed to find it again the following morning). Meaning 'bookshop of high water', the shop's solution to the constant flooding it receives every year from the nearby canal is to store its books in baths and a full-size gondola (no, we never went on one if you're asking; not for €80 for 35 minutes), as well as storing its books to the ceiling. With more people taking photos of the shop (including me) than buying books, it's a wonder they stay afloat at all.

We experienced all weather – sun when we arrived; then atmospheric mist and cold and finally rain (we'd prematurely high-fived each other when we overheard an American woman say it was to rain the next day – when we were leaving. We hadn't taken into account that the rain would start in the early hours of the morning, and we'd got soaked getting to the ferry).

Anyway. Venice, city of dreams. Pigeons and tourists, tacky souvenirs, pasta and pizza, ice cream, getting fleeced €6.50 for a coffee (well, I was glad in a way, it had to happen, and could have been a lot worse; still, it leaves a sour taste). The city's sinking, it's a theme park for tourists, a victim of its own success, begger's everywhere. Even so, it still feels like a city of dreams, no cars, water, beauty and art everywhere you look. And no sign of a girl in a red raincoat.

Venice in the movies
Don't Look Now
The Talented Mr Ripley (all set in Italy, with a few scenes in Venice)
Death in Venice
The Tourist (watched against my better judgement, but actually thoroughly enjoyed it.)

Venice in literature
The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer
Venice, Jan Morris 
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann

My Flickr photos of Venice are here.