LAST week, the billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez were married in Venice. Their three-day nuptials cost $55 million.

This is not the first time Venice has been subjected to such hyper events. In 1955, an Italian Princess Ira von Fürstenberg (then an underage 15-year-old) married 31-year-old Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg in a lavish ceremony that made the headlines.

Venice, although 1,600 years old, still exudes romance. Born of commercial wealth, it attracts money. It has become inured to costly eccentricities. It has been flattered by generations of admirers. Their list is endless, their devotion lasting.

John Ruskin — an early and influential aficionado — published a three-volume homage Stones of Venice, between 1851-53. In 1880, the unconventional writer George Eliot described Venice as a “creature born with an imperial attitude”. She and her husband John Cross spent their honeymoon in Venice. Cross, rather unchivalrously, attempted suicide by jumping into the Grand Canal. He survived, to complete his sentence.

Our Earth is just a speck in the cosmos.

In 1960, James Morris wrote a lyrical appreciation of Venice. He described it as “a half melancholy city, but not........

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