A chapter sealed
until the hour.

A city that should not exist — suspended on wooden pylons driven into the mud of a lagoon, defying gravity, defying logic, defying time.

Born when Rome fell. Risen when commerce found a route between East and West, between the silk of the Levant and the gold of the North.

A single audacious arch, drawn in 1591, united two halves of a city that had argued for a century about how to cross itself.

For four hundred years since, every gondolier has known its shape by heart.