Following the trail of a famous composer and ending up in a luxury hotel

BarcelonaMany people have the memory of a family member putting on an old vinyl or CD and playing it. The four seasons by Antonio Vivaldi on a weekend morning. Many people have learned to play an instrument thanks to the Venetian's compositions. And you don't have to be an expert in classical music to recognize his spring.

When I was young, on my first trip to Venice, I stumbled upon a church in a quiet little square in the Castello district. It was Christmas Day, foggy, and music was playing inside the temple of San Giovanni in Bragora. On the door was a plaque reading that Antonio Vivaldi had been baptized there on March 4, 1678. The plaque described him as ""the blond prete", that is, the red priest. A reference in the color of his hair. I assumed we already knew everything about Vivaldi's life, since he was such a famous musician. Well, no. Until relatively recently, it wasn't even known when he was born. In 1963, his birth certificate was located, a document now displayed under a bust of the musician inside the church. Much of his life remains a mystery.

Venice, a city at the center of the debate over mass tourism, used to be mysterious. Perhaps because of its narrow streets and canals, perhaps because it's a gateway to Eastern culture, a reminder of when its ships returned from Egypt or Palestine. Perhaps because of the Carnival masks. Venice hides secrets, like Vivaldi's life. And yet you can explore Vivaldi's Venice on foot in ten minutes, since the musician never moved from just one neighborhood, Castello. Then he went abroad, on trips whose details we don't know.

Vivaldi initially lived in the square in front of the church where he was baptized, and later near the Ponte del Paradiso, an area not far from the egg yolk and St. Mark's Basilica, where Vivaldi's father played the violin. And his son too, of course. But the church Vivaldian It's Santa Maria della Pietà, where he composed and premiered many works, as he worked for over twenty years at the Ospedale della Pietà. It was a building right next door for abandoned and orphaned girls. Vivaldi taught them music there and had free time to create. The church can be visited, but the Ospedale itself cannot. It closed at the end of the 19th century and ended up being converted into the Hotel Casa Kirsch, where people like Sigmund Freud and Thomas Mann spent the night. In the 1970s, it was bought by a British artist who converted it into the Hotel Metropole, a luxury hotel where you can't get a coffee but which remains linked to art, as many of the artists who attend the Biennale stay there. Modern musicians like Lou Reed and Mika have also spent the night within the walls of the building where Vivaldi slept centuries ago, freezing while he thought about how he would transform the changing of the seasons into music.

Recommendation for traveling to Venice

Work: The Four Seasons

Author: Antonio Vivaldi

Year: 1723