By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

VENICE, Italy, Sept. 10, 2025 — In the first four days of our trip here, we’ve had a great time attending and cheering the colorful Regata Storica oar boat racing on the canals of Venice; visiting one of the oldest universities in Europe in the nearby city of Padua; honoring our wedding anniversary with a fabulous dinner at one of the best restaurants I’ve ever dined in, and had long chats with our longtime friend Amy Namowitz Worthen, the artist and scholar who divides her time between homes in Des Moines and Venice.

We have another day in Venice — where we’ve become confident using the public transit system of vaporetto water-buses on the canals — and on Thursday use Italy’s exceptionally nice railroad system to carry us RicheBurgers to Florence for four days. Then we’ll driving a rent-a-car on to the Piedmont region in northwest Italy and on to Milan.

 

We feel very blessed, and only partially because we’ve already spent a good bit of time in the inspiring chapels, cathedrals and basilicas that 1) are also like museums of classical religious art and architecture, and 2) seem to be located no more than three or four blocks from each other all over Venice.

“With churches every few blocks or so, that’s one thing Venice has in common with small town, Iowa,” said my wife Mary Riche. Except only a few of them here are Lutheran or Methodist. Of the 139 church buildings in Venice, some research tells me, only 88 are still used as worship spaces, with the others having been repurposed for everything from schools to businesses to museums. Worthen, from all her meandering Venice the past 35 or so years, says there are five synagogues, a single-digit number of Protestant churches, a few Eastern Orthodox congregations, and the rest — and vast majority — are Catholic.

Understand, Venice is a metro area that, with total population of about 249,500, is not quite as big as Des Moines.

However, the historic portion of Venice proper is under 50,000 — and declining in the number of actual residents — mainly, Worthen says, from a steep cost of living and over-tourism. She guesses that on any particular day, there will be 100,000 visitors here.

There are four universities in Venice, “maybe 15 high schools” in Worthen’s quick guess, generally organized on career tracks. Most sports are intramural at the schools or in organized clubs in the community.

Other interesting stats: The Venice metro area is made up of 118 islands. Historic Venice is three feet, or less, above sea level. There are 26 miles of interconnected canals, with the famous Grand Canal, which forms a big reverse “S” through the community, 2.4 miles long. There are thousands of boats, 400 of them gondolas. Sewage is collected in the equivalent of septic tanks, pumped by pipelines or tanker boats to a sewage treatment plant, or flushed away by the sea tides. The climate is warm and balmy.

Worthen, 79, lives alone after the death in 2018 of her husband Tom Worthen, who for about 35 years was a professor of art history at Drake University in Des Moines. Amy continues to live in the small home they bought nearly 25 years ago. It’s the size of an apartment or condo, two or three stories depending on whether you count the one at sea level, is at the intersection of four canals (!) and “is worth more than my house in Des Moines,” Amy said.

Get this: The building here, which has homes for two or three other families, dates back “to the 13th century, maybe a little earlier,” she said. “When you see these very old, classic buildings today, you realize that over their histories, their interiors have been built and re-built many times.”

 

She lives in the “Campo San Giacomo” neighborhood, which like most neighborhoods, is organized around a Catholic parish. This one’s church, Chiesa di San Giacomo dall’Orio, dates to the 9th century. The plaza around it has several sidewalk cafes, a popular tavern, a bakery and other small businesses. It also seems to have a perpetual soccer game going on among a half-dozen boys of various ages and a couple of their dads.

Worthen’s two daughters, Shana and Maria, are living with their families in Sweden and Washington, D.C., respectively. There are three young grandchildren that Amy follows closely.

As an artist and scholar, she is an interesting study. A native of New York City, she graduated from the High School of Music & Art there, graduated in art at Smith College in Massachusetts, and “became an Iowan ‘for just a year’ in 1967” when she began her master’s degree work at the University of Iowa. She was studying and working in printmaking back then, and at the U of I, she studied with the legendary Mauricio Lasansky. Over her career, she has also included drawing (she always carries her sketch pad), photography (she’s very good) and art history.

Since 2012, she’s been researching the life of Cassandra Fedele, a 15th and 16th century philosopher and orator based in Venice, “the most well-known and learned woman of her time,” Worthen said. “Everyone sought time with her.”

Worthen is doing a deep dive on Cassandra Fedele, her life and works, in the Venice Division of the Italian National Archives. She has a grant supporting her work from a foundation that provides financial support for scholars studying Venice history.

Much of her research there, in a converted reading room of what was once a monastic abbey, is “reading tax records and wills from the 15th and 16th centuries.” She says that’s a different approach to history from what many scholars use, but “you can learn so much” in those ancient centuries-old records, which are handwritten and in big bound books or even on scrolls.

She has proposals out to publishers now to turn her research into a book on Cassandra Fedele. “I expect to be signing a contract soon, and once you have a contract, you generally have about 18 months to produce a book,” Worthen said. “I’m on schedule to do that.”

Day-to-day, how does it feel, living and working daily in 2025, but also in such deep history and around such classic art and architecture?

“It’s a dual life,” she says.

You’ll learn much more about our experiences in Italy in the photos and captions below here. The photos are by Mary Riche or Chuck Offenburger, unless noted otherwise.

 

 

The finish of a two-man rowing competition in Venice’s Regata Storica 2025, which was held Sunday afternoon, the day after we arrived in Italy.

 

 

Amy Worthen and Matilde Dolcetti, as we watched the regatta from windows in an upper story of Dolcetti’s home along the Grand Canal. Dolcetti was an artist-in-residence earlier in her career at the University of Iowa, where Worthen earned her master’s degree. Dolcetti eventually invited Worthen to teach at the Scuala Internazionale di Grafica, which Dolcetti directed in Venice.

 

 

We RicheBurgers had dinner celebrating our third wedding anniversary at the fabulous Bistrot de Venise, a short walk on a narrow street away from the Grand Canal. We dined indoors, actually, with scallops as an appetizer, gazpacho, Mary had rigatoni with mozzarella and saffron sauce, and Chuck had slow-cooked lamb chops with tiramisu for dessert. We had the traditional white-peach flavored Bellini drinks, Mary’s with prosecco, mine without. Chuck: “It’s the finest restaurant I’ve ever dined in.” (Photo by Bistrot’s greeter, who told us, “Photography is my second job here.”)

 

On Historic Market Square in Padua, Italy. (Photo by Alessandra Tormene)

 

 

Amy Worthen here chats with her good friend Alessandra Tormene, who gave us our tour of the University of Padua. Tormene lives in Padua and is a graduate, in political science, of the university. She is also a six-time rider of RAGBRAI in Iowa. Worthen and Tormene have collaborated as RAGBRAI coordinators for “Team Veneto,” a team of riders from Iowa’s sister state, which includes both Venice and Padua. Tormene has also been very involved as Italy’s representative in development of bicycle trails and touring across Europe.

 

A statue honors the first woman graduate of the University of Padua, Elena Lucretia Cornaro Piscopia. She graduated in 1678.

Some of the classic academic regalia is displayed at a small museum in the administration building of the University of Padua. Forms of this regalia are still worn by faculty and students today on formal or celebratory occasions.

The University of Padua neighborhood remembers one of the school’s most famous faculty members.

 

A depiction of Saint Anthony of Padua, at one side of the huge sanctuary.

Mary Riche stands beside the trunk of a ginkgo that was started in 1750 in Orto Botanico, the oldest university-owned botanical garden in the world, operated since 1545. Five centuries of history and 6,000 plants!

The RicheBurgers inside the section of the Orto Botanico devoted to medicinal plants. (Photo by Alessandra Tormene)

—

You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.