In memory reborn

If the heart of Venice is busily reliving itself, the more remote islands of the lagoon seem to linger in their decay. Abandoned fortresses and villas, some quite elaborate, fall into a ruin of tangled weeds and grasping vines. A twisted, weather-beaten dock to which is tethered a small boat juts outward from a tiny stone shack on an island little larger than the structure; still occupied, but part of a lifestyle that, almost, can no longer be. Even where habitation persists, it’s often amongst wind-ravaged, salt-faded shreds of paint and eroded wood along a morose quay, perhaps with a stooped and sullen figure in the black shroud of her final decade peering from an half-opened shutter. There are no slums in Venice itself, but these half-desolate settlements bear the desperate, almost pleading air of one; a feeling that while people may remain, life is slowly fading away.

…continued here.