Venice takes on a new mood after the tourists go home

Romantically decaying Venice bursts into action every two years with the Biennale contemporary art exhibition.

Art lovers swarm through the Italian city to see the paintings and videos, installations and sculptures by artists from almost 80 countries. To see artworks housed in everything from whimsical garden pavilions to Baroque palaces, the avant-garde crowd flows through the city's cobbled streets and canals for months.

The Venice Biennale has been held since 1895; these days the art isn't comforting, nor is it easily grasped. Look closely at one of the works from the 53rd Biennale that wrapped up last November. In "Composizione non finita — infinita" ("Composition unfinished — infinite") by the Italian artists Giampaolo Bertozzi and Stefano dal Monte, a tidy grid of 600 first-aid kits contains disembodied ceramic heads and other surreal clusters of body parts.

Yet there's more of a death-in-Venice mood once the art crowd and every summer's vast crowds of gelato-licking tourists are gone for the season. In the dank, more peaceful days of winter, Venice regains some of its melancholy feel. Mist and rain shroud the centuries-old buildings that hem the dark canals, and only a few footsteps echo in the twisting mazes of no-car streets, some barely wider than outstretched arms.

Roam this ancient watery city on a winter's day without a map, without "must sees" of art or architecture. Venice's hauntingly rich life will begin to sink in . . .

Kristin R. Jackson is a Seattle Times travel writer and editor.