John Ruskin (1819–1900) was a man of many passions: an art critic, a patron, a draughtsman, a painter, a philanthropist and a reformer. And he was a man who loved, loved Venice.

He channeled all his admiration into a three-volume collection of essays on Venetian art and architecture entitled The Stones of Venice. The collection was widely read and highly influential; one essay in particular, ‘The Nature of Gothic’, was shared in many other anthologies and is commonly cited as a major contributor to the great Gothic Revival of the nineteenth century.

The Stones of Venice is essentially a fabulously detailed description of Venice in Ruskin’s time. Take the following extract:

And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, to a low wharf or quay at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation; another glance undeceives us, –it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy.

So visual and evocative – it’s little wonder Ruskin’s writing inspired a wealth of writers to visit Venice and write there.

Thanks to the marvels of modern technology you can watch a virtual movie that brings to life Ruskin reading a part of his work. The words, when you listen, are as fluid and lulling and stirring as poetry.