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VENICE
“The Castle of Otranto”, by Horace Walpole, who set
his story here in 1764. And Venice, with a history
stretching back to Attila the Hun, has been a huge
inspiration to writers searching for the perfect horror
location: fromMuriel Spark who, in
Territorial Rights,
has a couple get mixed up in the burying of bodies in
Venetian gardens; to Wilkie Collins, whose
Haunted
Hotel
novella is set in the city; all the way to the
mighty Joseph Brodsky (who is buried here) and his
short work
Watermark
, with its chilling descriptions
of the freezing fog and disorientating claustrophobia of
Venice in the depths of winter.
It’s precisely this sense of unease that pervades the
early 1970s movie adaptation of Thomas Mann’s 1912
classic
Death in Venice
. Starring Dirk Bogarde as a
composer who limps around the city in the middle
of a cholera epidemic, the film’s themes of illness and
obsession show Venice as a city in a state of sickly
fin
de siècle
, where decay sits alongside passion.
“The whole world comes to Venice to find love,”
says Francesca Ricci, a retired walking-tour guide in
Venice, “but in winter this is a city where the ghosts of
the past come out to play. I have lots of novels about
Venice, but the more disturbing ones, like Grace
Brophy’s
A Deadly Paradise
, stay on the shelf in
winter. If I read them, I really can’t sleep at night.” She
is talking about the tale of Commissario Cenni, a loner
who investigates the mutilation of a pompous German
female diplomat. Arriving in Venice, his own demons
quickly envelop the narrative, creating a denouement
rich in genuine nastiness.
Brophy’s novel may be unfamiliar to all but the
most committed Venice horror fan but others are more
accessible. If you only read one spooky book about
Venice, then Ricci says it should be
The Man Who
Sees Ghosts
by legendary playwright Fredrich von
Schiller. “Carry a copy of this around Venice at night
if you really want to be scared,” she says. “The island
of Giudecca is still quite run down and this is where
a German prince goes in the 18th century. His strong
belief in the supernatural takes him to some very
PALAZZO GRIMANI DI SANTAMARIA
FORMOSA
This is the location, now a museum, where
Sutherlandmeets his end in
Don’t Look Now
(
palazzogrimani.org).
THE GIUDECCA
Shabby Giudecca Island still conjures up the
atmosphere of neglect where Fridedrich von
Schiller’s German prince descends into the
occult in 1789’s
The ManWho Sees Ghosts
.
CAMPIELLO DEL REMER
Facing the Grand Canal, this Byzantine
square is the setting for a ghost story from
1590 called“The Drowned Man Holding His
Wife’s Head
”,
retold by Alberto Toso Fei.
PHOTOS © REX FEATURES, GETTY, ALLSTAR/CINETEXT COLLECTION, ALAMY