The Invincible City

No, Venice didn't give Berendt what he had found in Savannah: "a plot involving sodomy, murder and theft," but it gave him more than enough. The gutting of the Fenice, "arguably the most beautiful opera house in the world, and one of the most significant," was "an especially brutal loss for Venice" because it "had been one of the few cultural attractions that had not been ceded to outsiders" and "Venetians always outnumbered tourists [there], so all Venetians felt a special affection for it, even those who had never set foot inside the place."

At the time of the fire, the Fenice was closed for extensive renovation, much of it underwritten by wealthy American members of Save Venice, "the American non-profit organization devoted to raising money for restoring Venetian art and architecture," including the Fenice's "painted curtain, at a cost of $100,000." Immediately, and understandably, suspicion was directed at various contractors and subcontractors working on the building and at the Mafia, which automatically goes to the top of the list of suspects whenever anything goes wrong in Italy. Conspiracy theorists of various stripes came to the fore, while officials in the city's paralyzed bureaucracy began their slow, inconclusive inquiries.

Meantime other matters, some directly related to the fire and the investigations, some peripheral, attracted Berendt's attention: Archimede Seguso, an octogenarian glassmaker who saw the fire at close hand and spent the rest of his life making an exquisite "record of the fire in glass -- the flames, the sparks, the embers, and the smoke"; two of his sons, also glassmakers, who eventually went separate courses in "a dynastic rupture of sweeping proportion"; the aforementioned Ludovico De Luigi, who over the course of Berendt's stay had many things to say, some wise, some cynical, not least that the aftermath of the fire was "all about money, as usual"; Peter and Rose Lauritzen, he American and she British, adopted Venetians who helped ease Berendt's way into the unknown city; various wealthy Americans, none of them unduly attractive, who squabbled over policy and position within Save Venice and staged hissy fits that did none of them any credit; Philip and Jane Rylands, he British and she American, who had attached themselves to the heiress, art patron and voluptuary Peggy Guggenheim in the 1970s and eventually played highly questionable parts in the allocation of the estate of Ezra Pound, who had spent many happy years in Venice.

In other words, a cast of characters just as one would expect to find in a book by the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil . A tangled tale as well, for after the arrest of two young electricians who had been working on the restoration of the Fenice and had been in the neighborhood when the fire broke out, the city became consumed by gossip and speculation about who had set the fire, and how and why. It is not as dramatic a mystery as the one Berendt followed in Savannah, and there seems plenty of reason to believe that those eventually found guilty actually were not, but it provides enough of a story upon which to build this most entertaining, intelligent and engaging book.

It is that and more. It is also a book about the American passion for meddling in other people's affairs, for trying to set the world aright, for being Lord and Lady Bountiful. One prominent Venetian nailed it smack on the nose:

"I don't know why Americans can't come to Venice and just have a good time, instead of coming here and beating their breasts. You know what I mean? It's this thing of having to come here on a mission. Why must they come to Venice to save it? It's nice, of course, the money they give. But it doesn't have anything to do with generosity. It means they want to look important. And, really, it's just a drop in the ocean. They should come and have a good time. Period. Right? Walk around. See some paintings. Go to some restaurants, like they do in other cities. Americans don't go to Paris to save Paris, do they? Right? When you see a five-hundred-year-old Venetian building, it may be a bit shabby and possibly even in danger. But you can't describe it as 'decaying.' It has endured five hundred years! The 'decaying Venice' is all a big myth. That's what I mean about Save Venice. Forget it. Venice will save itself. Go save Paris!"

No. Go save New Orleans. ·

Jonathan Yardley's e-mail address is yardleyj@washpost.com.