John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, published 1851-53, was an enormously influential book. It is not an exaggeration to say that the book changed the way people looked at Venice, and that to this day we still see the city with eyes and minds infused with Ruskin’s vision.

Before Ruskin, Venetian Byzantine and Gothic architecture, mosaic and painting were ignored as representing a barbarous interlude before civilization returned with the Renaissance. St Mark’s was abhorred as a monstrous blot; weathered stone was a defect to be put right, funds permitting, with mechanically cut replacements; Grand Tourists learnt that painting began with Titian and architecture with Palladio.

Ruskin’s views, passionately articulated – his idealistic adoration for the Middle Ages, his love of decoration and richness of surface, his belief that the decline of Venice dated from 1418 – were a radical departure from the accepted norms of the past. Underlying his aesthetic preferences were highly original socio-political ideas and the belief that art and architecture were a barometer of the spiritual and moral health of a society. It was this philosophical cogency which gave his writings such impact.

Ruskin’s brilliant polemics taught his readers to look at Venice the way he did, to love the city as he did. He was the first to make a cool-headed appraisal of the problems of Venice, political, physical, and sociological, and as one of the first modern conservationists he instituted a campaign to protect the fabric from ‘improving’ restoration and reconstruction.

The tour also looks at the responses to Venice by other writers, including Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron, and to British and American artists, particularly Turner, whom Ruskin championed, and Whistler, whom he reviled.