Looking at the video in the post below this one of Venice Italy made me think of Ezra Pound. He spent the last ten years of his life there. That was after he got out of Saint Elizabeths mental hospital in Washington D.C. He had been incarcerated there for 12 years after WW2.
Before WW2 he lived in the south of Italy. He had been declared a traitor during the war for taking the side of the Nazis and Mussolini and broadcasting his antisemitic views on radio. When got out of St. Elizabeths he was asked what he now thought of America and he replied, "America is a lunatic asylum".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_pound