WEEK THREE - VENICE

Irma meets best-selling crime novelist Donna Leon, creator of the Brunetti thrillers, to ask why she sets her best-selling books in the dark and secret streets of Venice. The contemporary Casanova scholar Maurice Agosti takes Irma to the sites of some of the great Venetian lover's liaisons.

Irma discovers what life is really like for a gondolier and reflects on the story of Venice's Jewish Ghetto in the city where the term was invented. Author and Venetian historian Alessandro Gianatassio takes Irma back in time in the lavish Ducal Palace. Irma also pays a visit to the Guggenheim Museum and Rialto Market.

Test your knowledge of Venice by trying our Flash quiz with picture clues. If you don’t have Flash you can get it here or try the standard quiz.

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"...afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great city, with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist of sunset."

"What a funny old city this Queen of the Adriatic is! Narrow streets, vast, gloomy marble palaces, black with the corroding damps of centuries, and all partly submerged; no dry land visible any where, and no sidewalks worth mentioning; if you want to go to church, to the theatre, or to the restaurant, you must call a gondola."