I’ve always been afraid to visit Venice. A city famed for the grace and reserve of a Bellini madonna is easily ravished. I feared the city of mirrors, masks, dreams, would prove to be nothing more.

Venice is known for forming her streets out of the ‘trackless’ sea rather than the scarred, limited land – endless streets for the imagination.

I thought the image of my imagination would be replaced by cruise-ships, ice-cream tubs turning on the water, heat rising from every stone and from swarms of shouting countrymen fighting their corners with selfie-sticks. My dream would be shattered forever.

It wasn’t.