Paolo
in Venice
— Italy

   Not everyone in Venice has had the good fortune to grow up in a spacious house. Paolo, however, spent his childhood and became a young man in a beautiful house on the main level of a building in front of the San Nicola da Tolentino church. “It was right in front”, says Paolo from the terrace of the apartment where he now lives with his wife and two children, with a view of the canal and of the building where he grew up. “When Isa and I got married twenty-one years ago, we bought a house that was nice but a bit small, at least for my tastes, not far from here. However, I kept my eye on this apartment; maybe it was an idea I always had, seeing it from the house I grew up in, thinking that one day I would buy it and renovate it, and I would go and live there”. Refurbishing a house in such a special location can be a real challenge, an adventure bordering on folly. “It was closed up for twenty years, because it belonged to a public agency which never decided to renovate or sell. They put it up for auction and I was the only bidder, though my wife didn’t quite approve. My bid was accepted.

   The previous owners had transformed the building without complying any regulations, they had made little rooms and bathrooms to rent out to tourists, and the place was literally a ruin – at least how the bank classified a ruin”. The home of Isa and Paolo is an explosion of light, salvaged with their original colours, frescos, decorations on the walls and ceilings. “We had to call in restoration experts and qualified workers for every part of the renovation, following the instructions from the heritage authorities; it was a long process that required lots of patience”. Paolo is a commuter, commuting by car to the mainland every morning and returning in the evening. However, he has never had the temptation to move elsewhere. “I have the sensation of being truly at home when I return to Venice, no matter where I’ve been. When I am in this city, any part of it, I feel at home. Venice is problematic, and it runs the risk of no longer being a city, because the tourism is pushing out the residents towards the mainland. A city is not made only of buildings and squares, it is also the people who live there, the inhabitants, their way of talking, their lives, their encounters and personal relationships. I’m not against tourism, and we Venetians have our own places, our own venues, but it pains me to see the shops that are all becoming equal. Venice is a small but very international community: there are college students from all over the world, researchers, artists, and foreign residents. It is a city where the whole world passes through, not like living anywhere out in the provinces where everyone keeps an eye on everyone else. Here you can dress anyway you want, no one will notice you”.

   Venice is a fish, the author Tiziano Scarpa has written. It will always be sustained as long as its inhabitants give it the force to tread water, making it glow and sparkle in the lagoon and in everyone’s dreams; as long as there are adventurous people like Paolo and Isa who are willing to renovate old houses and fill them with life again.