I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here: The case of the legs on the church

When you walk out of the train station in Venice, the Grand Canal is the first thing you see.   Or ought to see.   I remember that day 25 years ago; it was a bolt from the blue from which I have never recovered.  

But the Grand Canal hasn’t been the first   thing you see for quite a while now.   Your eye goes straight to the imposing baroque church on the other side of the water, and you’ll be staring at it not because it’s a church, or baroque, or  imposing.   It will be because of the imposing not-even-close-to-baroque billboard covering the facade.   I won’t describe it, I’ll just show it to you:

The idea of offering a sponsor a public space to promote its product in exchange for the money needed for restoration of art and architecture has become the greatest thing to hit Venice since the invention of the coffeehouse.   And it is absolutely true that the billboard preceding this one was much worse, as the lady promoting a line of handbags was even less clad.   This is the kind of hair-splitting you find yourself indulging in here, but  “It could always be worse” doesn’t get it done in a city that is an entire work of art.

Since the city never has any money to do anything it doesn’t feel like doing  (though there are weekly miracles in which funds appear for all sorts of unexpectedly necessary things, like installing turnstiles on the vaporetto docks), for some time now it has been offering vast spaces for private cash on monuments.    I am not the only person who finds this ad objectionable (nor am I the only person who is wondering why this church has been condemned to Restoration Purgatory; it’s been under scaffolding since the first time I saw it, in 1985).   Plenty of people have objected.  

I also find it objectionable that half of the Doge’s Palace is covered with publicity for Chopard (it started last September, with ads for Lancia),  and most of the Marciana Library is concealed by silliness by Swatch.  By the way, there is a national law which requires that the scaffolding covering  a public monument  under restoration must show a perfect replica of the concealed facade.    A mere detail, obviously.   But I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And  I mustn’t let myself stop now to talk about how the  city had stamped all the waivers needed to allow a Maltese business to put five mothers-of-all-Jumbotrons in the Piazza San Marco, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in exchange for millions of euros to restore the buildings they would be defacing.    This plan  seems to have been halted, at least for now.   One can never be sure if these shenanigans are really dead, or just in hibernation.

Don’t imagine that there are no rules for the safeguarding of Venice’s monuments.   There are metric tons of them.   But here is how the Doge’s Palace became, overnight, the most beautiful billboard in the world:  

The palace needed restoration; among other things, bits of marble were falling off it and barely missing passing tourists.   The work would cost 2 million euros, which the city doesn’t have.   So the Dottor Group,  a massive company specializing in architectural and historic restoration, got the job and put up the money, and so they get to rent  out the billboard space of the gods.   Then they installed the scaffolding (of course there are also laws limiting the square-footage allowed for publicity on public monuments, which these exceed) by driving iron hooks  between the 500-year-old blocks of Istrian stone, hooks which will be there for at least three years.

Suddenly the legs-on-the-church don’t look quite so bad?   That’s how you begin to lose your bearings here.   But never mind your taste in legs, or churches.   There are so many other  facets to the plight of San Simeon Piccolo that I can’t organize them for you; I’ll just give them as they come to me.  

  • Nobody knows how much money is needed for the restoration
  • Nobody can say how much money has been found so far for the restoration
  • Nobody knows how many hours a day that SACAIM, the restoration company, is working at the site,  or whether the contract is being honored
  • SACAIM won’t make any statement on whether or not the work has been stopped because it hasn’t been paid all the money it’s due  
  • Nobody knows what criteria are involved in deciding what  is considered acceptable publicity
  • The Curia (the church administration) has stated many times that seeking pelf through publicity is “squalid” (there goes most of Western civilization).   But this point is especially tricky because church buildings  aren’t technically the responsibility of the Church in Italy anymore, but are wards of the state and depend on federal money which is allocated by an assortment of Superintendencies (for architecture, archaeology, “cultural goods,” and so on).
  • The Municipal Police (as with the Superintendencies, there is a variety of forces of public order, with varying responsibilities) says that it has done its job as far as paperwork is concerned,  the array of  official  permissions required for work on public buildings, or on public spaces.   So technically it has no authority to remove the poster.

The Superintendency of Architectonic Treasures has already stated (as with the handbag-lady poster)  that the publicity has to come down.   The Curia is against it, but the Superintendency says that the Curia has the power of reviewing all publicity before it goes up.   But wait — in the controversy of the Jumbotrons, the Superintendent herself, Renata Codello, stated that every piece of publicity put up during restoration work is regularly approved or rejected by the Superintendency.   So who gave the permission for this poster to be put up in the first place?   Nobody knows.

So here we are:   Nobody decided to put it up, and now nobody can decide whether or how to get it down.   But this sudden flurry of discussion is making the Superintendent a little  testy.

Yesterday Monsignor Antonio Meneguolo pushed his advantage a little too far by stating that this whole thing is “monstrous and immoral.”   Superintendent Codello shot back that even though  she never gave permission for this poster (that ought to be an embarrassing thing for a superintendent to admit, but let’s keep going), the Curia hasn’t got much to be proud of either.   “We’re all for publicity,” she  told the Gazzettino, “it’s the only way which allows us to be able to restore buildings.   If the Curia were to put up some money, we’d take the publicity down.”  

Furthermore,  “It’s not as if we could have just left the church to fall to pieces,  abandoned by the Curia.   The patriarchate has never put up a single euro.”   So there.

But what about how hideous it is?   She’s ready: “The churches of the city are full of examples of really bad  interventions.”   Presumably not approved by the superintendent.   Though one doesn’t know why.

This bickering only shows that here in the Cradle of the Renaissance people still  defend themselves  by saying  “Yes, I did it, but he did worse.”   Which comes right after you say  “Well he started it.”

Let’s imagine that I understand most of what has been going on.   What I really don’t understand is why this horrible thing has become an issue right now.   It was out there for months and months and nobody said anything.   Now, all of a sudden, it’s a huge problem.  

In fact, the only thing that both the Superintendent and the Monsignor agree on is that they are  shocked, shocked  to find that there is a vulgar and immoral billboard on a church.

                                                     (I acknowledge the excellent reporting of Davide Scalzotto).

Continue Reading

April 25, Part One: Saint Mark’s Day

April 25 is the feast day of Venice’s patron saint, Mark.   (Not the official patron saint of tourists, though you might have thought so.   I haven’t been able to find one yet, though Gerasimos and Dymphna would be likely candidates, seeing that they’ve already  been assigned to watch over the mentally infirm. Travelers — as opposed to tourists — have the choice of Nicholas, Joseph, St. Anthony of Padua (he of the lost-objects fame) and/or the Archangel Raphael.   There is a definite difference between travelers and tourists, and it’s more often the latter who have need of divine aid.   Those are just my thoughts.)   Still, having one of the four Evangelists to watch over you ought to cover just about any eventuality, and clearly the early Venetians thought so too.  

        Venice was never without a patron saint, but for the first several centuries of its existence that task was assigned to a Greek soldier saint, Theodore of Amasea (“Todaro,” in Venetian).  

The original of this statue is safely out of the rain in a sheltered corner of the courtyard of the Doge's Palace.
The original of this statue is safely out of the rain in a sheltered corner of the courtyard of the Doge's Palace.

In that era Venice was still technically a colony of Byzantium, and a saint’s being Latin or Greek had as much political as religious significance.   By 828, though, Venice had begun to reach a level of importance, and independence, which convinced its rulers that they needed to upgrade their guardian.   A Latin saint now looked better than a Greek one, and why stop there?   They aimed for one of the four Evangelists, Saint Mark, whose body was known to repose in Alexandria, Egypt.

        And so they went and stole him.   Two intrepid sailors, known to history as “Buono” of Malamocco and “Rustico” from Torcello (unquestionably noms de guerre), spirited the body of the city’s erstwhile bishop out of the Muslim metropolis by hiding it on a  wagon covered in pig carcasses (and also cabbage leaves, which was the Venetian way of conserving meat, between alternating layers of lard and cabbage.    The Bible compares humans to grass, but Venetians are more realistic).

        This exploit highlights two of the most fundamental Venetian traits: shrewdness and audacity.   And in case “Good” and “Rustic” appear to have been improbably daring and clever, some scholars have made a good case for their having bribed the shrine’s guardian.   The point here, as in much of Venetian history, is that it worked.   For my money, the appropriate motto for the Old Ones wouldn’t be the legendary “Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus” [Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist]  which is inscribed on the book most of his symbolic winged lions are holding, but a straightforward “Get it done.”

        In the great days, Venice observed not one, but four celebrations of its saint:

  1. January 31, the “translation” (well, theft) of his remains, which was popularly called San Marco dei mezeni, because the body had been concealed between (in mezzo) the aforementioned pork and cabbage;
  2. April 25, his martyrdom.   This is the big day for us, and it is called the festa del bocolo, or feast of the long-stemmed rose;
  3. June 25, the finding of his relics (fancy word for corpse), which had inexplicably gone missing during or after the great fire in the basilica in 976.     Legend has it that a priest was led to the site of the concealed body by a powerful scent of roses, so not only did the liturgy involve a priest sprinkling the altar with rosewater, the day itself was referred to as San Marco dell’acqua rosata, or Saint Mark of the rosewater.   Roses again.   I have to look into that.
  4. October 8, the dedication of the basilica, which had been built specifically to honor and preserve his body.   Ordinary people called this simply San Marco de le zizoe, the Venetian word for  jujubes, a popular but transient little autumn fruit here which is like a date made of styrofoam.   I buy them at least once just so I can say the word: ZEE-zo-eh.   It makes me smile.   There is, in fact, more to say about them, but I’ll save that for another time.

All this wasn’t just because Mark deserved it.   Venice’s masters loved pomp not only for itself but because they knew how to exploit it.   They made a point of creating celebrations around an enormous number of events — saints’ days, deliverance from plagues (twice), military victories, even military defeats.   All that was necessary was that Venice had to have been the star.   It worked extremely well, because all of this festivizing kept civic pride bubbling away, ready for use at any moment.   You weren’t even to imagine that there could be anything better than being a Venetian, and ceremonial was a dependable way to keep that fact front and center in your average Venetian’s brain.

        Back to the body.   There is a body under the high altar, and it is labeled as being Mark’s.   Lino doesn’t believe it.   I don’t know if this counts as heresy, but being a good Venetian, he doesn’t care.   He makes a good case: For one thing, he says, it’s pretty suspicious that the body is never venerated, not even on April 25.   For another, he says that when Angelo Roncalli (patriarch of Venice from 1953-1958) became Pope John XXIII, he gave an important (unidentified) relic to the church in Alexandria.   Lino tells me this with that “What more do I need to say” look.

        What it all comes down to today is the long-stemmed red rose, the longer and redder the better.  

The custom is for a man to give one to the woman — or women — he loves.   Could be his wife, mother, sister, girlfriend, cousin.   No protocol on this, except for the wife or girlfriend, which are non-negotiable.   Anyway, as roses were costing at least five euros each this year, the typical man’s list has probably been cut back to the minimum.

     

 

 

        Lino is a traditionalist to the bone, or in this case, the rose.   He would go without lunch and possibly even without wine, if he had to, but he would never skip the rose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        He even gives a rose to our club’s eight-oar gondola, or gondolone.   Of course she is named “San Marco.”

 

Continue Reading

The Daily Marvel: The Phantom Ferry

“Marvel” is probably not the right word, but it’s the best I can think of to describe any occurrence here — and there are many of them — which if it were a jigsaw puzzle, you’d be at the point of discovering that there were some very important pieces missing.   Not pieces that fit together, necessarily, but an important piece gone here, and another absent there, the lack of which make the total picture kind of weird and not a whole lot like the image on the box.   That’s bad enough, but never fear: You’ll also discover that there are pieces coming to hand  which you’ve wasted a lot of time trying to use before you understood that they had wandered over from other puzzles.   The picture the puzzle shows when you finally give up may not look very much like the one you were aiming for.

Having said all that, today’s marvel is the case of the refurbishment of an additional car ferry.   Some background:

  • The Lido is a long, narrow, sandy island which which separates the Venetian Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea.   It is about 11 km (6.8 miles) long, and counts about 17,000 residents.  
  • There are cars and trucks and motorcycles on the Lido.   This is one of the many ways in which the Lido doesn’t resemble Venice at all, even though technically it is part of the Most Beautiful City in the World (MBCITW).  
  • These vehicles often travel to the rest of the world by means of a car ferry which  stops at Tronchetto just at the head of the bridge  to the mainland, and also vice versa.   Cars also travel to and from Pellestrina via car ferry.   Taking a car to Pellestrina seems a bit insane, since there are buses and all you can do with your car when you get there is park it, but people with cars, especially on the Lido, don’t consider anything a valid excuse not to drive.
  •  There are more and more cars etc. on the Lido (last count I read said two for each person) because Lido people have a sort of collective mania, like Obsessive Car Disorder.    Of course cars are  useful if you need to go to the mainland or somewhere else out there, but the other day a friend of mine drove his car from his house to an event on the beach, a distance which takes under ten minutes to walk.   He has no physical handicaps, and he wasn’t carrying anything.   The sun was shining.   Parking, traffic, pollution, fatal accidents — the once-fabled  Golden Island has them all.
  • These  cars  are carried aboard fairly typical car ferries, which are essentially large rectangular floating platforms with a hinged ramp at each end.   The first and oldest working member of the fleet, the San Giorgio, was acquired from  Great Britain  after it had finished its service  in World War 2.   Lino remembers when San Giorgio, began regular public service.    Until then, the few wheeled vehicles that needed to reach the Lido (presumably for very long stays) arranged their own ferry transport.   He remembers that the ramps were raised and lowered by hand, by means of a sort of capstan operated by the mariner; also, there was no cabin for the captain.     [The picture at right is of the “Marco Polo,”  a typical example.]
  • There are a number of important annual events on the Lido which drastically increase the traffic.   The Venice Film Festival is one, another is the Vogalonga (add boat-trailers to the mix), and sometimes the first or last stage of the Giro d’Italia. The start of this year’s race is on Saturday, May 9, and more than 600 more cars are anticipated on the Lido.   The residents’ cars are going to be forced to stay home, I think.   They’ll probably all be clustered in the bars, drinking  steadily.   The cars, I mean.
  • The transport company (ACTV) has six working ferries.   This isn’t enough, especially between April and October.   This means that long lines form.   The mood of people in long lines, especially in the summer, especially if they have small children, needs no exegesis from me.
  • In the winter, these six ferries make 25 roundtrips per day; this number increases, somewhat, during the high season in the summer.   The company says that each can carry up to 70 cars.   Sounds good, unless you’re driving a cement mixer or a supermarket delivery truck, or a camper and towing a boat trailer, or anything else that takes up extra space.   It can get a little tense at the boarding area.

        Enter the Phantom Ferry, the much-needed and -heralded seventh member of the fleet.   It does exist, but only in a general sense.   I mean, you can touch it.   You just can’t use it.  

        Originally named “Salamina,” for the eponymous Greek island, the ACTV bought it from Greece in February, 2008 at a price they boasted was a steal.   Sorry, I mean bargain.   And why did they go to Greece to buy a second-hand ferry?   Because they needed it fast.   Remember this detail.   No time to order a new one, and the price was right.   Even better, it measures 100 meters in length (compared to the measly 74 meters of the other ferries) and will carry up to 100 cars.   Just  a little fixing-up, and a new name (“Lido di Venezia“),  and it would be in service for the summer season.   Of 2008.

        I remember seeing this tired old ferry whenever we rowed past the Giudecca.   It was moored behind a ramshackle, seemingly  abandoned  boatyard, sitting there peacefully like one of those little old people who accidentally get left behind by their family at the interstate rest stop.  

        Now we’re on the verge of the summer season, 2009, and still no sign of the Lido di Venezia.   She’s been moved into the Arsenal, where work has been underway.   Turns out there have been a few those bargain fixer-upper surprises.  

  • The current landing stages are all built for 74-meter-long ferries, not for one that’s a third again as big, so something has to be done there;
  • The motors aren’t marine motors, but truck-type motors, and the Naval Registry says that these motors can’t operate above a certain number of rpm’s, which are not in fact enough to enable the ferry to make its maneuvers;
  • There are other technical details that need adapting, altering, or otherwise fixing.   Many.

        So, this amazing bargain,  at a paltry  3,000,000 euros, ready for almost instant use, has had costs added for “small technical checks” which amount to an additional 983,000 euros.

        To summarize: That’s nearly 4,000,000 euros.   For a used ferry.   That you can’t operate.   But which was a terrific bargain.

        The ACTV has responded to the publication of this saga in the paper by saying, essentially, that  all this was known at the outset, all the costs planned for, everything under complete control. So far, though, I’m not sure when it’s supposed to  start working.   Projected  dates don’t have much reality here, in a city where it seems that plans are often calculated to the nearest round century.

        Seeking some perspective, I tried to discover how much a ferry like this would have cost if built to order.   I haven’t found it yet, but I have learned that the Italian Navy, according to one of its own documents, ordered a similar craft which was only 20 meters long, and its price is given as 3,992,000 euros.   So I suppose one could say that the ACTV did, indeed, score a deal.   The only drawback is that the Navy’s ferry is working.

        Just another day in the Most Beautiful City in the World.

Continue Reading