20 March 2008

Her banner


The exceptional design of La Serenissima’s flag is enough to tell you that she is something more, something apart from any other place on the globe. Fashioned in blood-red and brilliant gold, it bears her self-styled legend of Mark the Evangelist, and its six tails flutter and undulate so seductively that it simply cannot be ignored.

Show me any other city, province, satrapy, kingdom, or country, now or at any time in history, represented by a banner as bold, as vivacious, as memorable as this one. Such a place did not and does not exist.