Judging from a kink in an airliner’s path high above the stretch of the Adriatic visible from Motovun, I reckoned that Venice must be just beyond. It must be in the straight line through the sliver of the Gulf of Venice of old. Later in the day I learned that the lights of Venice could be seen from the church tower on a good day. The map vindicated the hunch and the tale. Just beyond that stretch of the sea on the horizon, the crumbling navel of the old world…