I found myself in Harry’s Bar in Venice, recently – the way you do!

It was a short break to that fabulous city, so unlike anywhere else in the world, to mark a recently mentioned birthday – and a trip to historic Harry’s Bar, at the side of the Grand Canale, seemed the thing to do.

Slightly haughty barmen – for they were all men – dispensed Bellinis to tourists like me, who had been drawn by the history of the place.

Ernest Hemingway and a host of literary luminaries had made this their snug of choice, and Hemingway had pretty much holed up there for long spells, getting inspiration, one imagines, for his novels.

And, ever since, awestruck tourists had made their pilgrimage, hoping to catch a sense of the literary history in which Harry’s Bar is steeped; and who knows, maybe some inspiration themselves, for that unwritten novel that we all have in us, apparently!

Certainly, it was a pretty international bunch who gathered in that famous watering hole and sucked in their breath, and steeled themselves for the bill…two Bellinis – or a week in Malta, you choose!

Truth is, I’ve been in nicer pubs – in Leith!

Inside, the place was very… ordinary and if they had resisted the temptation to upgrade the place since Hemingway and Co. graced its four walls that might explain how tired and ‘50s it seemed – not at all prepossessing.

Only the history it contained gave it any value, currency or merit. What it meant was much more important than how it looked, with its uncomfortable chairs, its cramped conditions, and its exorbitant prices. What it meant, that intangible sense of something more… Churches can do that too – give you more than you see, taking you beyond the stonework and the shining oak pews to the something more, the history they contain, the story they tell… The countless prayers offered in that holy place, that make it sacred and precious, mean that it is able to touch us deeper than we ever imagined.

The churches of Venice offer meaning too, beyond the frescoes and the candles and the glittering brass lamps and over-blown sculptures, a silence and a stillness that sounds deep in the heart.

It was good to go there, too!