“Detourism: La newsletter di Venezia”, the official Town of Venice Tourism Office Newsletter, takes us on a “detour” through the lagoon today, discovering the artisans of the gondola! Enjoy your reading!

The ancient craft of gondola-building, part of venice’s cultural heritage.

There’s no doubt that the gondola is the best known traditional Venetian wooden boat. Sleek and elegant, it is the floating city’s most recognizable symbol, where it has been in use for centuries as everyday transport. Yet it has not always been as we know it today, quite the opposite. Over time, it has gradually evolved, until it has become a slender 11-metre boat with a flat-bottomed, asymmetrical hull. This allows a single gondolier to propel it in a straight line in the narrow lagoon canals.

Gondolas are laborious to create and require expert knowledge: just think that a classic boat has about 280 pieces – each with a specific function – of various wood including lime, oak, mahogany, walnut, cherry, fir, larch and elm!

Over the centuries, precious knowledge and traditional building methods have developed around the gondola and other Venetian wooden boats, still kept alive by a group of skilled artisans, whose century-old crafts are protected and promoted by the El Felze Association.

Many specialised artisans work on the creation of a gondola. The hull is built by the squerariòli, the carpenters who work in the squèri (small boatyards); then there are other artisans specialised in making oars and fórcole (or rowlocks) as well as other mostly ornamental components: brass horses, carved and gilded friezes, bow irons, but also cushions and furnishings for the passengers and hats and dresses of the gondoliers.

There are more than fifteen traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boats, besides the gondola, including the sàndolo, the mascaréta, the s’ciopón, the puparìn, the tòpo, the sanpieròta, the batèla, the caorlìna, the bragòsso, and many others. To ensure the geographical origin and quality of traditional Venetian wooden boats, since 1996 there has been a collective trademark registered at European level by the Veneto Region. It is the trademark “Typical and traditional wooden boat of the Venice lagoon“, granted to boatyards in the Venice lagoon where wooden boats and their accessories such as rudders, oars and rowlocks are built exclusively according to the traditional building techniques.

To learn more about the history of traditional Venetian boats, visit the Naval History Museum, where, among the many boat models, there is also an eighteenth-century model of the Bucintoro, the parade boat used by the Doges. The model was made by the workers who built the last Bucintoro in the history of the Venice Republic, also painted by Canaletto.

Visit the Venice Naval History Museum

[source: La newsletter di Venezia, N° 18/2021 del 06.09.2021]
[immagine: Pixabay]

We are proud to publish some selected contents of such newsletter (see previous post: “Detourism for the Up and Down the Bridges“). On our website, in several episodes, we will only present some samples (see all posts in our archive page “Detourism Newsletter“), but the invitation addressed to all the friends of the Up and Down the Bridges is to subscribe to the newsletter directly.
Special thanks to the Councillor for Tourism for having enthusiastically welcomed this new important collaboration between TGS Eurogroup and the Tourism Office of the Town of Venice and for giving us the precious opportunity to publish on the pages of this blog some extracts from this newsletter, both in Italian and in English.

To receive the newsletter “Detourism” directly in your email box every fortnight fill in the online form proposed by the Town of Venice.

Discover all the itineraries of #Detourism to explore a different Venice, promoted as part of the #EnjoyRespectVenezia awareness campaign of the Town of Venice.
Adopt conscious and respectful behaviors of the cultural and natural heritage of Venice and its lagoon, a site protected by UNESCO.

Sustainable Tourism Service of the Town of Venice:
www.comune.venezia.it/it/EnjoyRespectVenezia
www.veneziaunica.it/it/content/detourism-venezia
turismosostenibile@comune.venezia.it
Facebook: @DetourismVeneziaOfficial
Instagram: @Detourismvenezia
Twitter: @DetourismVenice