People always ask, 'Why do you write books set in Rome (or Venice in the present case)?' I don't actually. 'Rome' and 'Venice' are general descriptions for something much more complicated, the tangled, jumble mass of communities that, taken together, attract the name of a municipality. What I write about are parts of that greater whole. Finding the areas I want to focus upon has become one of the first tasks I face when putting together any new work.

The past books can easily be broken down into the key location areas I used for each. Much of <em>The Blue Demon</em> is set around the Quirinale Palace and Tarquinia, the Etruscan town north of Rome. <em>Dante's Numbers</em> begins in the park of the Villa Borghese, diverts to a very special building in Trastevere, then spends most of the rest of the book in the Marina and Cow Hollow areas of San Francisco. <em>The Garden of Evil</em> has the tightest focus of any book I've ever written: the area between the Pantheon and the Piazza del Popolo which, in Caravaggio's time, was the place the Pope decreed the city's prostitutes should love (and for some reason the artists and writers followed very soon after).

Defining a precise location enables me to peer very closely at the people and the culture of that neighbourhood. I'm a miniaturist; I look at small things in precise detail. I prefer this to trying to paint some broad, sweeping picture. So what I wanted more than anything from this trip to Venice was to nail down the three -- three's a good number -- areas where most of my story will take place.

It's done -- here they are, though you won't see the final story till 2012 of course.

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<strong>Zattere in Dorsoduro, near the Punta della Dogana</strong>

I knew I had to get this place in because a few years back, while on a language course in Venice, I stayed in a very special apartment here. It overlooked the Guidecca canal and introduced me to this end of Dorsoduro -- the opposite side to the Guggenheim museum for those of you who know Venice. At this time of year around noon the view from the Zattere waterfront across to Guidecca, and the great church of Redentore, looks like this. Note those time qualifications: the view is different, sometimes very different, earlier and later and, of course, at different times of the year. The light in Venice is as subtle as the shading on a Turner painting.

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Looking back to the city the streets and <em>rii</em> (small canals) looks like this...

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I like this as a location for the following reasons:
<ul>
	<li>It's got that wonderful defining view from the promenade</li>
	<li>You don't see a lot of tourists down here</li>
	<li>This story is going to take place in the depths of winter and, trust me, it's damned chilly and bleak at times when you're by the side of that canal</li>
	<li>That apartment I stayed in a few years ago was so damned weird it <em>has</em> to be in this book</li>
</ul>
<strong>The Rialto markets at night</strong>

Every morning the Rialto markets are full of tourists and locals, the latter there for the fish and vegetable market that shuts up shop at noon. The afternoons are full of tourists usually buying the most awful crap. The evenings though... I think this has happened only recently but those bleak, empty squares have become a kind of night spot for the adventurous Venetian young. Even in this weather they stand outside drinking spritz in the freezing cold, chattering, having fun. It's very odd and very cool, and because no one lives around here things can go on pretty late (late being unusual in a city which in many parts closes down around 8.30 at this time of year.

Here is the square in front of the church of San Giacomo di Rialto, a hotchpotch building on the site of the very first church built in Venice around 421.

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Those shadowy figures are flitting from bar to bar, spritz to spritz, and will keep doing that until the early hours. It's pitch dark out there. There's a sense of anonymity, almost as if one were wearing a mask, which intrigues me.

Here's a shot inside one of those little open bars.

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There's also architectural detail like this (no, not telling, you'll have to read the book).

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Here's what I like about this as a location.
<ul>
	<li>It's very, very creepy</li>
	<li>In a way it's not very Venetian</li>
	<li>There's a certain loss of individual identity in the darkness that intrigues me</li>
</ul>
<strong><a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/p1160001.jpg"><img style="float:right;padding-left:4px;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/p1160001-tm.jpg" alt="P1160001.JPG" width="250" height="333" /></a>Castello, around the Via Garibaldi</strong>

Venice is divided into six city areas known as <em>sestieri.</em> Castello is the biggest, bordering on Cannaregio and San Marco and running all the way to Sant'Elena at the tip of Venice. In parts it's rich and touristy. But once you get beyond the Arsenale you move into small, low streets of modest houses many of them once occupied by the thousands of workers employed by the Arsenale boatyards.

In many ways this is the closest one can get to a true Venetian community these days. You can still hear the local Veneto language in some of the cafes in the Via Garibaldi, the main street that stretches back from the waterfront (and is actually a filled in canal).

There's washing hanging on the line day in and day out, little shrines in odd locations, a local, distinct atmosphere you won't find anywhere else in the city. A few tourists make it here out of curiosity and are usually quickly gone when they realise there's very little see. Unless, of course, the Biennale is on and the Giardini gardens are full of exhibitions (as they will be next year).

I want a very local figure to walk onto the stage in this story and this modest corner of Castello is just the place for him.

Again, the reason I like this area...
<ul>
	<li>It's nothing like the Venice most of us know</li>
	<li>It has a very distinct and separate identity</li>
	<li>The Venetians still living here have a special feeling of community that's hard to find in many other parts of the city where foreigners have come in and bought local accommodation, pushing up apartment prices (though they're pretty stiff in eastern Castello too these days)</li>
</ul>
That, then is my groundwork done. I return to the UK on Sunday for a week of preparatory writing and planning, then it's back here in early February for the carnival -- since that is the other setting for this story, and something I've never ever seen. Here's another shot of Castello before I go.

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