Ruskin first visited Venice in 1835 at the age of 16. He last visited the city in 1888, aged 69. In all there were eleven visits which span all of Ruskin's working life. During this period he saw the transformation of Venice's historical island character through the building of the railway causeway which linked it to the mainland. This was opened in 1846 and was seen in its completed state by Ruskin on his third visit in1845. The young Ruskin made two tours with his family, in 1835 and 1841, during which he perceived Venice as the most romantic of city landscapes. The latter of these visits was to underpin his early role as a critic, where in the first volume of Modern Painters he claims Turner to be the only true exponent of that romantic view of Venice. Ruskin's second set of journeys to Venice comprised his first visit without his parents in 1845, the last Italian family visit in 1846, and the two long winter visits of 1849-50 and 1851-52 which resulted in The Stones of Venice. During this period Ruskin's understanding of the city's Byzantine and Gothic architecture and of its painters, especially Tintoretto, grew. He began to contrast an ideal and historical Venice with its modern and ruinous counterpart. These observations resulted in the second part of Modern Painters II (1846) and in revisions leading to the present text (Third Edition, 1846). They also influenced parts of The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and provided the foundations for the three volume The Stones of Venice (1851-53). In the fifth volume of Modern Painters (1860), Ruskin contrasts the Venice of Giorgione with Turner's London. His last series of journeys to Venice consisted of brief trips made from Verona in 1869, group tours with family and friends in 1870 and 1872, and a lone visit from September 1876 to May 1877. His final visit of 1888, in the company of Detmar Blow was cut short because of 'the elements of imagination which haunt me here' ( Works, 37.608). Venice has a place in Fors Clavigera (1871-78 and 1880-84) as a social, political and commercial model. In St Mark's Rest (1877-84) and the Guide to the Principal Pictures in the Academy... at Venice (1877) Ruskin produced alternative guide books which, in contrast to tourist guides such as John Murray's, portray Venice as a shrine. In the decade following, which proved to be Ruskin's last productive one, preceding his final mental incapacity, he directed a group of disciples including Carlofonti, Alessandri, Zorzi, and Boni in an attempt to record the artistic and architectural inheritance of Venice including St Mark's.