VENICE THE CITY
Lord Byron called Venice (Venezia) "a fairy city of the heart." La Serenissima, "The Most Serene," is an improbable cityscape of stone palaces that seem to float on water, a place where cats nap in Oriental marble windowsills set in colorful plaster walls. Candy-stripe pylons stand sentry outside the tiny stone docks of palazzi whose front steps descend into the gently lapping waters of the canals that lace the city.Venice is a city of great art and grand old masters. Venetian painting enjoyed early masters such as the Bellini clan -- Jacopo from the 1420s, sons Giovanni and Gentile from the 1460s. By the early 1500s, Venice had taken the Renaissance torch from Florence and made it its own, lending the movement the new color and lighting schemes of such giants as Giorgione, Tiziano (Titian), Paolo Veronese, and Tintoretto.
Venice is an extraordinary city, and a magical venue for this Festival of Media. It is a living, breathing, singular city that seems almost too exquisite to be genuine, too fragile to survive the never-ending stream of visitors who have been making the pilgrimage here for 1,500 years. It also offers us the perfect venue for a business conference and exhibition in the Palazzo del Cinema (home to the Venice Film Festival) and for networking and social events amongst the 15th century palazzos, traditional restaurants, luxury hotels and more modern bars. With regular direct flights arriving at Marco Polo airport from all over the world, it is a fitting destination for global media and marketing executives to take time out of the office and focus on the creative future of their business.
