Teatro La Fenice

This guide to Teatro La Fenice in Venice opens on the night of January 29, 1996, when two electricians facing fines for late repairs climbed onto the roof of the shuttered opera house and set it on fire, with the canals that should have fed the firefighters' hoses already drained for those same repairs. It traces why the theatre was named La Fenice, the phoenix, back in 1792, after the company behind it lost a legal fight over an earlier theatre that had burned, and it follows a second fire in 1836 that put the name to the test again. Stand facing the facade and picture the outer walls as the only thing left standing by dawn in 1996.