The British Centre in Venice has undertaken publication of the present bilingual edition of "Ruskin in Venice" to mark the exhibition for the first time in Venice of a significant number of the drawings and watercolors Ruskin made of the city. Venice represented John Ruskin's ideal of civic society-"The Paradise of Cities," where culture, government, and faith existed in creative harmony. In this elegant and compelling book, Robert Hewison traces Ruskin's long and intricate relationship with the city. He shows how Ruskin shed his earlier Romantic vision of the city and developed a harder, clearer conception of neglected Gothic Venice through an intense study of the city's physical fabric that would change the international understanding of the city. Drawing on the rich resources of Ruskin's drawings, architectural notebooks, and manuscripts (including previously unpublished daguerreotypes from Ruskin's own collection), Hewison offers fresh insights into both Ruskin and nineteenth-cent