Maurizio

Zanetti

With a lot of curiosity and patience and a little luck, the splendid and well-known Venice can still surprise you with small priceless glimpses. Like the "Fondamenta de le Grue".

In the heart of the Po Delta, in the Ca Mello area, small marvelous cultivation of lavender. The photo can return the color, not the wonder of discovery and least of all the perfume.

Chioggia, known and admired as "the little Venice", reserves continuous surprises among its streets and canals. Even the parapet between the tables of a "bacaro" and the canal gives joy with its rainbow of colors.

In the background, the walls of the ancient Lazzaretto of Verona, designed and built starting from 1549 by the great architect Michele Sanmicheli. In the foreground a splendid field of poppies.

The butterfly is a Zygaena, the flower is an IRIS. No stylist will ever be able to reach with his compositions the wonderful color combinations that nature offers us every day. Just look around. And maybe have a smartphone in your hands...

They are the most photographed pair (of ducks) in the city. They live peacefully under the ancient Ponte Pietra. They allow themselves to tourists who hastily pass by, take a picture, leave. They are in no hurry: that bridge is always their home. The photo was taken with iPhone 12 Pro.

There are corners of nature, just a few minutes' walk from the heart of Verona, which when spring bursts become even more beautiful than they already are. Between iris and olive trees, the photo was taken with iPhone 12 Pro.

In August 2020 in Verona, a monstrous storm knocked down hundreds of secular trees as if they were ebon threads. On what remains of one of these someone has engraved a heart. For once it is not the action of the usual hooligan but an act of love. And the hope is that what remains of the tree won't be cut down. The photo was taken with iPhone 12 Pro.

The splendid Piazza delle Erbe, in the heart of Verona, at sunset. Desolately empty due to restrictions to fight Covid-19. Better times will come ...

With the restrictions dictated by Covid-19 it is impossible for now to travel. I console myself with walks around the house. And always having the iPhone at hand, I enjoy taking portraits of my neighbors' cats. Great models ...

The ancient walls of the Roman Theater wet from the rain. In the background "the beautiful Verona" with its Adige river and the church of Sant'Anastasia

The Crests of Monte Grolla, the Lessinia plateau, just over half an hour's drive from Verona. What is the summer is a prairie populated by grazing cows these days is beautifully covered by almost a meter of snow ...

Sacred and profane in Venice, Castello district, a few hundred meters from the Arsenale. An ancient capital and the old communist section coexist to the delight of the few tourists who pass through these streets of the Venice of the Venetians.

The ancient defense walls surround Verona. Stratifications that start from the Roman era, cross that off the Scaligera lordship, arrive at the Austrian occupation. A few hundred meters from the crowded streets of the center, a splendid path crosses the Parco delle Mura.

Christmas in Venice means being able to find a shared Christmas tree in a small square in the Castello district, far from the tourist flow. The photo dates back to the end of December 2018. A memory that the current pandemic makes even clearer. A wish that everything can be as before as soon as possible.

Going around the street with the smartphone in your hands or in any case at hand is always an opportunity to transform an image into a photograph. And if the walk takes place in the most beautiful city in the world, Venice, the only problem is to have a spare battery, because the opportunities to take a photo are endless. Here we are in the area of the Ostello di Santa Fosca, Cannaregio, once a convent of the Church of the Servants of Mary. Of which some walls remain around a splendid courtyard.

The advantage of always having your smartphone with you is not in being reachable for a phone call but in being able to have a decent camera. So it can happen that you walk along the path along the walls of Verona at an hour when the setting sun gives lights and shadows on an old wall. And an emotion becomes photography.

Contrada Cenise di Sotto, a group of beautifully restored ancient houses respecting what they were. With a small museum that reminds passers-by of the culture and work of those who lived in the past in those houses. To get there, take a small road that starts from Bosco Chiesanuova, about thirty kilometers from Verona. It is nice to go there in every season but it is with autumn that the colors literally leave you breathless.

Between Malga Lessinia and Castelberto, Lessinia Regional Park, trenches were dug among the ancient rocks during the First World War. Today they can be visited, with the silence and respect they deserve.

Hard to get up at dawn in late summer, the sun still rises very early. But if you do it and you are by the sea on the Conero Riviera, with a little luck you can find this beautiful landscape.