n his book ‘Venice is a Fish,’ Tiziano Scarpa writes at length on the potentially lethal effects of being continually surrounded by the beauty of this city: 

‘In the historic centre, the aesthetic radioactivity is extremely high. Every angle radiates beauty….you are face-butted, slapped, abused by beauty, Andrea Palladio topples you over…Mauro Codussi and Jacopo Sansovino finish you off. You feel terrible. It’s the famous illness of Monsieur Henri Beyle, a disorder known to history as Stendhal syndrome.’ 

‘the tourists are lucky: the moment they find themselves confronted by a splendid piece of architecture, the neutralize the aesthetic radioactivity by boxing it away in a camera.’ 

[Tiziano Scarpa, Venice is a Fish: A Cultural Guide, Serpent’s Tail, 2010]