Siamo Foresti

When author John Rawlings and his family moved to Venice for a five-month sabbatical, they quickly fell under the spell of La Serenissima (the most serene one), as the city is called. Their stay turned into a season of learning colored and inspired by the history, architecture, art, and culture that surrounded them.

Siamo Foresti—Rawlings’s account of his love affair with Venice—is a combination travel memoir, history book, and city guide that doesn’t sacrifice beauty for fact. Anecdotes about sightseeing and encounters with locals are deftly interwoven with fascinating historical and aesthetic tidbits, pulling you irresistibly into the story