This year’s springtime meeting of the Ken Whyld Association on 23
to 25 May in Venice was certainly a unique experience for the participants
(see our group photo).
This city has the strangest and most wonderful townscape of the (Old)
World, not only because of the numerous works of art and its more than
1200 years of history but also because of its geographic location.
Location
of our venue and lodging
Casa "Cardinale Piazza" |
The idea for this third regional KWA meeting (2006
Copenhagen; 2007 London) was born during
the visit of the chess Olympiad 2006 in Turin, and it was a special pleasure
for me that Alessandro Sanvito and Antonio Rosino were able to keep to
their – at that time rather vague – promise. But without the
active support of our young Bozen friend Luca D'Ambrosio and of the tireless
Romano Bellucci who was worried about our Obliged to Tradition ....
till the last day, this event wouldn’t have been so successful from
my point of view.
This time really everything went well together:
The weather was incredibly kind to us: While the whole of Italy suffered
from downpours you could enjoy two magnificent summer days at the east
coast of the Adriatic Sea. For the first time we had succeeded in putting
up all participants at the same place, the plain but very clean and quiet
Casa "Cardinale Piazza" in the Palazzi Contarini-Minel (picture
series 1 / 10 pictures) where the lectures and – till long after
midnight – chess duels took place.
More about that later on …
On Friday afternoon 13 participants (partly with their families) and 2
guests arrived at the venue. Miquel Artigas from Sabadell (Spain) whose
sister lives in Venice gave us a great surprise by his appearance.
Unfortunately Rolf Glenk had to withdraw his participation at short notice,
the great Italy lover has most regretted that himself. Certainly our friend
from Forchheim had already prepared a small "presentation gift"
for the participants.
On
the Isle of Murano |
After
a trip (missed by me) to the Isle of Murano [including a tour of the Basilica
dei SS Maria e Donato with a chessboard mosaic (picture
series 2 / 6 pictures – from Sunday)] Alessandro Sanvito started
the official part with his lecture on the Pacioli manuscript (gallery
3 / 15 pictures) which was offered by the Aboca Museum, Sansepolcro
(AR) in different (de luxe) editions as reprint and facsimile.
Alessandro
Sanvito giving his lecture |
|
At
least the museum had delegated for two days an employee (Paolo Cambrai;
picture on the left) to our meeting who accepted all our questions,
among other things about an English edition of the facsimile. |
|
