The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy

This first section is a brief explanation of my Italy blog posts, which were inspired by my 2-week trip to Italy in May, 2025. Feel free to skip this section if you’ve read it before.

Dear Reader, If you read my Italy posts in the order in which they’ve come out, it may seem as though we hopped back and forth all over the country, but I have decided not to write these posts sequentially. I want to write about the things that interest me most, as the spirit moves me. For some topics, I may even combine cities. I hope that by doing so, you’ll find it a lot more interesting than if I just give you a tedious day by day description of our itinerary, as if I were your Aunt Mabel forcing you to sit down and watch all her Super 8 films of the family road trip to Niagara Falls from 1966.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about how I’m approaching this travelogue-within-a-blog, please let me know in the comments below!

Back in 2006, I had been traveling in Slovenia with my boyfriend, and there was an opportunity to take a hydrofoil to Venice for a half day trip. Yes, please! But being in Venice for only half a day is almost cruel. Gazing at the 80 photos I managed to take, I see riding on a gondola with total strangers, posing with pigeons in St. Mark’s Square, views from the bell tower, street performers, the Rialto Bridge, the Bridge of Sighs, and the exterior of a whole lot of places we didn’t have the time or money to enter. And then it was a desperate sprint back to the hydrofoil.

It was like being presented with the most delicious banquet you’ve ever seen in your life, and then being told you can only choose one appetizer, after which you must go back to the maid’s room in the attic. It left me wanting more (just as the relationship had).

Fast forward to 2025, and here I was, in Venice again, this time with Dear Husband, and one of the places I was determined to see was the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. It is in her former home on the Gand Canal. A chance to see abstract and surreal art and explore a Grand Canal home at the same time is something I’d never pass up.

Peggy herself was as quirky as her art collection. Her father died on the Titanic in 1912, and she and her mother had a strained relationship. She left home, became interested in owning galleries and collecting art, and eventually moved to Europe. She was in Paris right about the time the Nazis invaded, and had to run to the South of France. She had begun collecting not only to collect but also to preserve at that point. In her lifetime, she also promoted artists such as Jackson Pollock.

Here are some of the photos DH and I took of her collection during our visit:

I’m always astounded when I encounter a painting that I have been seeing in photographs all my life. Seeing this one by Magritte blew me away.

Peggy led a very bohemian lifestyle in an era when feminism was not even a common word. She was married and divorced twice (and it broke my heart to learn that both husbands physically abused her). She claimed to have 1,000 lovers. She didn’t seem to care what people thought, so I was surprised to learn that this sculpture, that stands boldly in front of her home, facing the Grand Canal for all passersby to see, has a detachable penis that she could remove when “important, yet more conservative” visitors came to call.

She moved to Venice in 1947, and lived there until her death in 1979. Her cremains are in the garden of the home. Right next to them are the graves of the many beloved Lhasa Apsos she had over the years. (The second dog, Pegeen, was named after her daughter. She could not understand why her daughter was offended by that.)

Because the museum was once her home, it has a rather intimate feel that other museums lack. She even opened it to the public while she was still living there. Three days a week, she’d head up to the roof to sunbathe while people wandered around, appreciating her art. This was often to the shock of her guests, who would have to shoo total strangers out of their bedrooms.

I hope that some of these views from the property and within the garden will give you a sense of the intimate, yet gorgeous, feel of the place. We should all live this well. I guess it helps when your family gets in on the ground floor of the mining industry and you inherit a billion dollars (in today’s money). Lucky family. But ultimately, lucky us. This museum is a gift to the world. Check it out if you’re ever in Venice.