According to legend, today is the birthday of the city of Venice, la serenissima. At 12 noon on 25 March 421, the city’s first church (San Giacomo, so dedicated to Saint James rather than to the traditional patron saint of Venice, Saint Mark, whose relics wouldn’t make it to the city for another four hundred years) was dedicated on the Rialto.
I think I might celebrate the occasion by (re)reading Charles and Sebastian’s trip to visit the Earl of Marchmain in Brideshead. Or Peter Ackroyd…
