Every year for all the 30 they have been married, Louis Begley and Anka Muhlstein spend long, enjoyable months in Venice. They write and live there and over the decades La Serenissima has become their second home. The owners of their favourite restaurants have become their friends and they share the lives of the locals, far off the beaten tourist tracks, as Muhlstein describes in her contribution to this book. Louis Begley tells the story of how he fell in love with and in Venice. He is not the only one who did, as his literary essay on the city's place in world literature demonstrates. Henry James, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann are only the most illustrious predecessors. Muhlstein and Begley's Venice is a very private view of a place, which will forever inspire dreams of love and passion.