“It is always assumed that Venice is the ideal place for a honeymoon. This is a grave error. To live in Venice or even to visit it means that you fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else.”

“After your first visit you are destined to return at every possible chance or with every possible excuse. There is no staying away for long. [...] Every hour of the day is a miracle of light. In summer with daybreak the rising sun produces such a tender magic on the water that it nearly breaks one’s heart. As the hours progress the light becomes more and more violent until it envelops the city with a diamond-like haze. Then it commences slowly to sink into the magic sunset, the capolavoro of the day. This is the moment to be on the water. It is imperative. The canals lure you, call you, cry to you to come and embrace them from a gondola. […] Day after day one is drawn from terraferma to float in the lagoon, to watch the sunset, or to go gently past the palaces seeing their images reflected in the canal. The reflections are like paintings more beautiful than any painted by the greatest masters. […] If anything can rival Venice in its beauty, it must be its reflection at sunset in the Grand Canal.”

- Peggy Guggenheim, Out of This Century (London: Andre Deutsch, 1979)