Venice began to percolate or make its first cappuccino in 1200-ish. The famous palazzos date to 1500-ish. Nothing’s changed but the prices. Venice is gorgeous, historic, thrilling. But a thieves’ market. A short one-way ride on the vaporetto — or river bus — is $10.
The church Chiesa di San Polo — not to pray or attend a service — just to see it is $10 a couple. Here you pay to see God. Stores advertise genuine hand-blown Murano glass. One bore the sticker “Made in China.” Shops sell third-generation designer handbags. Copies of knockoffs.
The city’s latest glorious attraction is the Aman. This, our planet’s 26th Aman hotel, is on the Grand Canal. It opened this week to coincide with the big-time Biennale art show, for which 600 private planes descended on Venice. Bodies came from all over — the rich, the artistic, the name droppers.
Crowds surrounded the Aman the day I arrived. I wondered, “Venetians read the New York Post? . . . They all came to greet me?” Then off a boat, surrounded by a pride of elves and fotogs, floated Italy’s first lady of fashion, Miuccia Prada, surging past me like I was leftover orlon.
Past the entry hall’s 20-foot lantern — one of six that lit Venetian Navy warships at the Turks’ 1571 defeat — came Signora Prada to the Palazzo Papadopoli now transformed into the 24-suite hotel, the Aman Canal Grande.
Its genie is Adrian Zecha, a one-time reporter whom I first met when we were both kid scriveners in Djakarta. In those days, neither of us was anything. Today I’m staying in his hotel. Another kid who spent his youth in Djakarta is in the White House.
Venetians decry Americans. Oh . . . so many Americans . . . oh, so noisy the Americans . . . but when our economy and their tourism went south, they went crazy. “Where are the Americans?” they cried. Yet the one subject that comes up at every plate of pasta is the US locals don’t discuss their municipality, Italians don’t discuss their Marx Brothers government. They’re all obsessed with America.
In the lobby of the Aman, under 16th-century Tiepolo ceilings, a Venetian said, “Italians all think they are Americans. They just don’t have to pay the taxes.”
Palazzo Papadopoli is the ancestral home of Count Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga and his wife, Bianca di Savoia Aosta, who was born into the House of Savoy, and were Italy not a republic might have been queen. This movie star gorgeous count and countess reign in baronial — or countessial — splendor on the penthouse floors.
Today this royal house hosts non-bluebloods like Nadja Swarovski, the crystal creature who gave her party in the Aman. She did not invite me. She did invite me to her showing of some sculpture thing. I went. She didn’t.
The streets are filled with yachts from all over — even President Sukarno’s daughter, Kartika, came from Indonesia to see the Biennale. The art, so neo, nouveau and interpretative that it looks like Dali on acid. The Austrian pavilion has animation by Disney. The American pavilion was partly subsidized by Lauder and Bloomberg. And, oy — as they say in this country — all I can tell you is I split for lunch.
While I’m here, Vanity Fair is on the fourth floor, shooting the Aman’s 17th-century library. Departures magazine is on the second floor, shooting its 16th-century gilded ballroom. Non-Venetian VIPs like Princess Michael of Kent and Tilda Swinton of Scotland were swanning around, having been imported to speak on behalf of the Venetian Heritage Foundation.
Also there were the Buccellatis, and Mrs. Buccellati was having a meltdown because she wasn’t sitting at a Buccellati/Lauder table.
Venice is a safe city. Forget about Bruce Willis’ movie getaways. Since there’s no quick escape, there are no robberies, no rapes. About ladies of the evening, not sure. Who ever heard of a street swimmer?