Moments from Arsenale

Long before it became a Biennale venue, the Arsenale was the industrial engine of the Venetian Republic, a shipyard founded around the twelfth century that, at its height, could reportedly assemble a fully outfitted war galley in a single day, a feat of mass production so far ahead of its time that Dante used its pitch-boiling vats as an image of Hell in the Inferno. For centuries it was effectively the largest industrial complex in Europe, employing thousands of workers and building the fleets that made Venice a maritime power. Much of that raw industrial architecture, brick sheds, iron gantries, waterways cut straight through the buildings, survives largely intact and now houses contemporary art during the Biennale rather than warships.

The space itself tends to overwhelm delicate or quiet work, so notice which artists are actually building for the architecture, using its scale, its water channels, its dim brick vaults, rather than just hanging a painting inside a shed built for galleys. Wear real walking shoes; the route through the Arsenale's halls runs a considerable distance and the floors are bare concrete and stone. If you can, walk it slowly on a weekday morning, the light through the old dock openings changes the space dramatically compared to a crowded weekend afternoon.