Dorsoduro

This guide to Venice's Dorsoduro district opens at midnight sometime in the nineteen-tens, with the Marchesa Luisa Casati parading the alleys in nothing but a fur coat, two leashed cheetahs at her side, on her way to a half-built palace she has just rented on the Grand Canal. You'll hear how she turned that unfinished stump of a mansion into the strangest party in Venice for over a decade, and who quietly moved into the same rooms after her money ran out. It ends among the boatbuilders who still work this firm ground the old way.