I could see the Lion of Venice from my bedroom window, spreading the pages of a book with its paws. Winged and perched on top of a pillar at the mouth of Piazzetta di San Marco, it faced away from Saint Theodore and his dragon on the western column.

The Golden Gate Bridge was built shortly after the Ambassador, in the early 1930s, and it shares its art deco verve, but on a whole different scale. It’s made to be experienced. Time-lapsing fog, thick and unforgiving, rolls over cyclists as they cut through waves of sea smoke.