RENAISSANCE CITY BETTER THAN TRAVELERS' WILDEST DREAMS.

Byline: Thomas Swick Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

Venice is to the man-made world what the Grand Canyon is to the natural one.

You head off to the city, as to the national park, expecting disappointment. How can it possibly live up to expectations? Then you arrive and you realize that nothing could have prepared you for the mesmerizing improbability of the place.

It hits you immediately: the reality of its unreality. You disembark from your train and walk through Santa Lucia station - past the endless lines of groggy backpackers waiting for the room reservations office to open - and there it is, sitting just outside the terminal doors: a bunched classical tableau topped by a green copper dome and spread along a busy canal. You don't have to wander through nondescript neighborhoods to get to the beauty; it's all around you. Which, admittedly, is due to the water.

You can cross it on a bridge, the Ponte di Scalzi, or churn it in a vaporetto, the Venetian bus. You choose the boat, and rush to one of the outdoor seats just to the side of the pilot's station.

You thought you were headed down the Grand Canal but you're not; you took the wrong vaporetto. It heads in the opposite direction, like a tour backstage before the performance, whetting your appetite, prolonging the suspense. You swing out into the Canale della Giudecca, a wide expanse lined with palaces that are now apartments, two-bedroom walk-ups with ageless cats and Renaissance views.

In the distance San Giorgio Maggiore emerges, and even if you can't remember its name, you recognize its graceful tower and dome. Everything's happening so quickly now that you can't search through a guidebook; you can only sit and stare.

Then, gradually, the Doge's Palace swims into view on the opposite shore; St. Mark's Campanile pricks the sky like a sharpened pencil. You have a sensation not so much of entering a city as of sailing into a painting by Canaletto. The Piazzetta dei Leoncini inches close enough for you to make out the dragon-slaying warrior standing atop the nearer column and the winged lion gracing the second.

St. Mark's Basilica then peeks out from behind the two pillars and suddenly this most celebrated vista is revealed in one ornate, ephemeral, all-star jumble. It is not just the water but the airy arches and spires that convey a feeling of floating. The whole scene has the festive look of a stately coronation or a royal regatta, but there are only tourists walking about, and pigeons squabbling.

"There is no pretending that the tourist Venice is not the real Venice, which is possible with other cities - Rome or Florence or Naples," Mary McCarthy writes in "Venice Observed." "The tourist Venice is Venice."

For centuries, every artist, intellect, composer and poet worth his salt has come to this relic-cluttered marsh and added his two cents.

Arriving in 1354, Petrarch called it "the only home of liberty, peace and justice, the only refuge of the good." (Though later it would give the world the word "ghetto" and the system of taxation.)

But by the beginning of the 19th century the favorite subject of those who came to see Venice was decline.

The philosopher Herbert Spencer found the Doge's Palace to have "dumpy arches" and "dumpy windows." Mark Twain, in "The Innocents Abroad," wrote that the city looked like "an overflowed Arkansas town.

A more enthusiastic Truman Capote wrote that "Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs at one go."

Robert Benchley, showing a cautionary side, cabled his friends back in New York: "Streets full of water; please advise."

In Venice, there is too much to see in a week, a month, a year. You set off early in the morning, full of ambition, and in the evening you wander back defeated to your guest house.

Your day began at the Ca' d'Oro (Golden House), the Flamboyant Gothic palace on the Grand Canal where you saw Titian's "Venus." Then you got in one of those stand-up gondolas that ferry people across the canal and moseyed around the fish and vegetable market, awash in claws and tentacles.

After a long walk and a short wait you made it into the Accademia Galleries - Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Tiepolo, da Vinci, Caneletto. Several centuries of artistic masterworks and you did them in an hour and a half.

After lunch you got off the well-traveled Strada Nuova and wound your way back to the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo. It was the L-shaped apotheosis of an Italian piazza, with its dwarfing church, its earth-toned cluster of unsteady houses, its ink-black huddle of gossiping widows, its bare-kneed hive of ball-kicking children.

On your last day in town, you follow empty alleyways under hanging laundry, you pet tabby cats sunning on ancient stones, you try on porcelain carnival masks, you order an extra scoop of hazelnut gelato.

You haggle with a gondolier. You take your bobbing black leather seat and position the foot stool with its black cord fringe. Softly, you are off.

He doesn't sing, your gondolier, but he makes a strange, directional call before passing under a bridge. In the narrow canals, he pushes you away from the houses with his foot on their walls. Other tourists in other gondolas pass, and they, too, are hushed; there is only the soft whir of a video camera and the slap-slap of waves. And in this aquatic lull you notice, as if for the first time, the absence of automobiles. It is the closest any means of transportation has ever come to approximating a dream.

And then it is over. There is a rude shock when the black boat docks and you are escorted out to face the real world. The only consolation is that the real world, in this case, happens to be Venice.

On Location

Vaporettos, the boats that serve as city buses, are the cheapest way to see the Grand Canal and to get to the surrounding islands such as Lido, Murano and San Michele. Walking is easy, although steps on the old bridges over canals make it difficult for people in wheelchairs.

The city is something of a maze, so expect to get lost, or else just follow the crowds. Of course, you can't leave without taking a ride in a gondola; try bargaining for the lowest price, but expect to pay about $60 for a 45-minute excursion.

For more information on Venice, write the Italian Government Travel Office, 630 Fifth Ave., Suite 1565, New York, N.Y. 10111, or call [phone].

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Photo Tourists take a goldola ride along the canals of Venice, gliding past spectacular palaces and churches. Tom Swick/Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel Box On Location (See text)