Just one of the countless waves (here, the Giudecca Canal lands a left hook on the Zattere) which are reducing Venice to rubble.
Slapping. Punching. Thudding. This is the sound of what things have come to. For 1,795 years, Venice celebrated Ascension Day with a ceremony in which the doge threw a golden ring into the sea and intoned the words: “Desponsamus te, O Mare, in signum veri perpetique dominii.” (“I wed thee, O Sea, in sign of true and perpetual dominion.”) In this case he was referring to the Adriatic, and possibly even the Mediterranean, and the Venetians did an excellent job of this for a long time. But the Venetian lagoon is a body of water which resists domination. It is not a happy marriage.
The gondoliers at the Molo, on the Bacino of San Marco in front of the Doge's Palace, finally installed a breakwater at their own expense. It's not the perfect solution, but it's better than nothing.
Over the past 50 years, the complex rapport between land and liquid, hitherto marred by only occasional bickering — an engineering misunderstanding, say, or some meteorological outburst — has now reached the stage of open battle.
But contrary to the general impression the world has of Venice’s rapport with its waters, the most serious problem does not involve acqua alta, or high tide. It is motondoso (sometimes moto ondoso), or the waves caused by motorboats, which is literally killing the lagoon’s erstwhile spouse. And unlike other forms of pollution or pressure, waves are a little hard to keep secret. The sight and sound of crashing water has become nearly constant.
Venetians routinely refer to motondoso as “the cancer of Venice.”
If you’re not impressed by the roiling high seas surrounding the city (try stepping between the leaping and plunging dock and vaporetto after the motonave — or better yet, the Alilaguna, the yellow airport “bus” — has just passed), give a glance at any canal at low tide.
You’ll see walls with chunks of stone and brick gone, stone steps fallen askew, cracks and fissures snaking up building walls from the foundation to the second floor, and even higher. It doesn’t take many canals before you begin to wonder how the city manages to stay on its feet. There are palaces on virtually every canal which have holes in their foundations bigger than hula hoops — dank caverns stretching back into the darkness. I have seen them with these very eyes. And if I’ve seen them, so has everybody else. But it just keeps getting worse.
Several years ago the fondamenta on the Giudecca facing the eponymous canal was finally completely repaired. Years of pounding waves were causing it to literally fall into the canal. But the waves continue as before — on the contrary, they’re increasing. The force, the height, the frequency, pick what you will. It’s all bad. (One study has stated that the highest waves in the entire lagoon are in the Giudecca Canal.)
Therefore the fondamenta is beginning to weaken again in the same way, which you can check by looking at the point at which a building is attached to the fondamenta. Cracks are opening up. Again.
So fixing — or saying you’ve fixed — a problem doesn’t count for much if you haven’t, you know, actually fixed it.
The constant spray from the waves creates the ideal environment for a type of algae which is spectacularly slippery. And in the winter, spray turns to ice. You're on your own.
Low tide here is an appalling revelation. One of the primary causes of this damage are enormous iron workboats. If one bumps into a wall even slightly, it opens a crack (or hole) which the waves keep eroding. Hey, it's not their wall. (Photo: Italia Nostra)
This is one version of the intermediate stage, here on the Riva dei Sette Martiri facing the Bacino of San Marco. The waves have been pushing and pulling underneath and gravity has begun to take over. Just imagine if this were happening under your house. And yet, this is normal by now. There are no warning signs or barriers, no indication whatever that anything is happening here. This silent catastrophe is just sitting here peacefully in broad daylight as people wander by.
Waves working night and day will eventually produce a result like this ruined fondamenta facing the Canale di Santa Chiara just behind Piazzale Roma. The former walkway looks like a dead parking lot because it's undergoing renovation, work almost certainly necessary because the pavement was giving way due to the pounding waves in the canal. The fondamenta will eventually be new, but the waves will continue – not only is the canal narrow, it is a major route for vaporetto and barge traffic.
Out in the countryside you may only need some twigs, a match, and a jug of wine to make a party, but in Venice you’ve got to have boats. Boats that race, to be precise. And before she finally moves on, the Befana has to get rowing.
Last year we rowed from the Lido to Venice with a strictly regulation street-sweeper's broom attached to the bow of our six-oar caorlina. Just to blend with the decor, so to speak.
Ever since darkest antiquity sacred festivals have included some form of athletic competition. The Olympic Games spring to mind, but even the tiniest hamlet lost in the mountains may still organize a foot race, or horse race, or something else, when their saint’s day comes around. In ancient Greece some events, such as the funeral of a woman, would require a race reserved for women.
On Epiphany they held the 32nd edition of the Regata de le Befane, the race of the Befanas, in the Grand Canal. It’s fun to watch, doesn’t take long, there are free refreshments — they even hang an enormous calza caena, filled with only God and they know what, from the Rialto Bridge. In fact the only people who take it seriously in any way are the five Befanas.
Who are these hags? Men over 50, members of the Bucintoro rowing club, who have passed the eliminations for a place in the five-boat line-up. The event is limited to five because more can’t fit abreast in the Grand Canal. It’s just a sprint; the official schedule allots fifteen minutes to the race, but it really only takes about five. Maybe eight. But they are minutes filled with drama, at least for the participants.
The boats: Mascaretas, each rowed by one person with one oar.
The course: The aforementioned Grand Canal, from the major curve in the Grand Canal (the “volta de Canal”) at the Palazzo Balbi between the Accademia and Rialto Bridges to just before the Rialto Bridge.
Last year's victor, Giovanni Rossi, known as "Specene'." He finished second this year. Even Befanas aren't immune to disappointment.
The garb: Strictly Befana, the men decked out in wigs and Dogpatch skirts and crocheted shawls, with scraggly brooms and weird teeth (often their own).
It takes a while to get them reasonably lined-up — it’s a “flying” start, which means each keeps inching forward while waiting for the starting gun. This gambit often means a longish wait as the judge attempts to make them stay even, at least for a second. They also have to wait for a break in the vaporettos coming and going, which isn’t so easy nowadays considering how many there are at any given point/moment.
They’re off! The tide was going out — good, in a way but, as with all Venetian races, the luck of the draw which determines the positions in the starting line-up was a powerful factor in the outcome. Because while they were all rowing against the tide, due to the shape of the canal some had more of it against them than others. The man closest to the shore, if you will, had to confront slightly less current than the ones rowing more toward the middle (and, in fact, he’s the one who won).
It's harder than it may appear to get five boats lined up straight and ready to race.
But closer to the shore means that you have to work your way around the San Toma’ and San Silvestro vaporetto docks while the others are trying to get as close as possible to the left as well. Sure it seems like a doofwit little diversion, five guys in costume flailing away with their oars like Mixmasters, but they take it as seriously as rowers take any race here. Simmering rivalries, some having nothing to do with rowing but with club/personal/childhood events, can also heat up the competition. Small world — long memories.
And they're off!
What I like best about all this isn’t so much the race itself as wandering around the Grand Canal in our boat waving to and trading badinage with our friends. It may seem like a touristic event (and certainly there are plenty of bemused tourists and their kids lining the fondamentas and jamming the Rialto Bridge, enjoying the free drinks and galani and hard candies) but like many rowing events it has a pure neighborhood vibe. Everybody knows everybody — everybody has always known everybody here — and even slight changes in rowing partners can excite comment, as can everything in a neighborhood.
And unlike tennis, or chess, or sumo wrestling, you don’t have to know anything about it to enjoy it. That Befana — she’s quite a girl. Or, you know, whatever she is.
The free refreshments are overseen by a phalanx of Befanas.
Some while back, I recounted the unpleasantness between two gondoliers near Piazzale Roma on August 14 which resulted in the just-boarded passengers of one combatant (the defender) being overturned into the drink. One detail of this encounter that has only now been reported is that not only did the aggressor gondolier — they’re never named, which is tiresome — yell horrible things at the defender, he got to the point of physically attacking him and attempting to hold his head underwater. If you should ever dream of trying to become a gondolier, this is not a skill you’ll be tested on.
Gondoliering is essentially a job, like anything else.
Now, for anyone who might have been wondering how the story finally ended, the case has just been adjudicated by the Ente Gondola, the governing body of the gondoliers, and the sentence doesn’t involve courses in anger management or hours and hours of community service. Unfortunately.
The nameless defender has been given a two-day suspension. The published accounts of this kerfuffle never described how he responded to the attack but evidently he didn’t just stand there and take it. So, two days.
His nameless aggressor, however, has been suspended for six months, beginning November 1. This means he won’t be working at Christmas, New Year’s, Carnival, or Easter.
Don’t start taking up a collection just yet, though, and you don’t need to picture him shivering at home, wondering how to make a pound of pasta last a month. Because he, like all gondoliers, undoubtedly has a substitute. And when the gondolier isn’t working, the substitute takes over (hence the word “substitute….”). And the gondolier, wherever he is (skiing at Cortina, snorkeling in the Red Sea, whatever), gets to keep 3/4 of the money the substitute makes. So this outcome is basically a great thing for the substitute — six months of work!!! — and a type of paid vacation for the gondolier.
A detail from one of innumerable paintings of the battle; in contrast to the artistic hyperbole of many renditions, this gives clear information on the geography. To the right (east) is the narrow entrance to what is here called the Golfo di Lepanto (now the Gulf of Corinth); to the west is a scattering of Ionian islands, primarily Kefalonia and Ithaki.
Nafpaktos on a modern map.
We’re back from our excellent adventure in Greece, and to tell the story in even its most rudimentary form will require a little time and a certain amount of context. I’ll try to keep the pace brisk, but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Stragglers will be shot. Deserters also.
Practically every town and village in Greece has its special annual event, but there aren’t many anywhere whose local festa commemorates an event crucial to the history of Europe and, I think one may say, the world.
In the gondolone outside the entrance to the harbor at Nafpaktos, your correspondent rowing on the stern. Behind us, the entrance to the now-tiny fortified harbor, backed by the four-walled Venetian fortress.
We went, eight of us with the faithful gondolone “San Marco,” to a town called Nafpaktos (NAHF-pak-tos), just inland from Patras on the west coast of Greece, to participate in the annual spectacle which commemorates the victory of the Battle of Lepanto. The Venetians modified the town’s other name, Epaktos, into Lepanto (LEH-pan-to), and this is the name by which the epic naval battle of October 7, 1571 has gone into the annals. Nafpaktos means “place where ships are built,” but judging by its history — eight battles over two millennia — it more likely means “place where ships are blasted to flinders and their crews killed and maimed.”
The territory of the Ottoman Empire at its maximum moment.
This clash was arguably the most important sea battle to be fought in the 900 years separating the one at Actium and Trafalgar. Why do we say this? Not only on the basis of the numbers involved, but because the battle put an end, once and for all, to the efforts of the Ottoman Turks to conquer the Adriatic and thus open the way for their further expansion into Europe. If the coalition fleet, powerfully bolstered by the Venetian contingent, had lost, Europe would soon have had many more mosques than churches. To put it tactfully.
Let me pause to say to any Turkish partisans out there that I adore Turkey and admire large chunks of its history and culture and would willingly go there at any time for any reason. But when an empire wants to grow — which is a given, considering that once you start an empire, it’s kind of hard to stop until somebody stops it for you– some hideous things can happen. I believe we can all agree on that.
The walled harbor of Nafpaktos, clearly much smaller today than in 1571, though the Turkish fleet never completely fit inside. The two massive fortresses which the Ottomans built on each bank of the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth made the region safe enough for them.
The backstory: Turks and Venetians had been fighting and making up for centuries by the time the fateful year of 1571 arrived. But the situation had become increasingly desperate, as one after another the Ottoman forces conquered many of Venice’s prize possessions in the eastern Mediterranean and moved ever deeper into the Balkans. Then came the appalling siege of Famagosta in Cyprus, which dragged on for ten months between 1570 and 1571, thanks to the bulldog resistance of commander Marcantonio Bragadin who had absolutely no hope of reinforcements. On July 31, 1571, not only was he was finally forced to capitulate, he was then flayed alive and his skin stuffed with straw to make a sort of effigy which was paraded through town on a donkey before being sent as a victory trophy to Sultan Selim II. The humiliation, rage and grief of the Venetians pushed them to the head of the line when the chance for revenge came just two months later at Lepanto.
That, and the fact that there had already been not one, but two, battles at Lepanto (1499 and 1500) with the same cast of characters and plot line, both of which Venice had lost. If history is geography, Lepanto is clearly on one of those strategic power points.
One of countless renderings of the battle as depicted by the victors.
The combatants: The Ottoman fleet, obviously, on the one hand. On the other was the combined forces of The Holy League, organized by Pope Pius V and comprising ships from Spain, Genoa, the Order of St. Stephen (Pisa), assorted towns of Dalmatia, the Knights of Malta, the Papal States, a healthy assortment of Italian noble ruling families (de’ Medici, Gonzaga, Este, Farnese, della Rovere), the dukes of Savoy and of Tuscany and, of course, Venice. The commander in chief was Don John of Austria, who despite being only 25 years old showed himself to be a brilliant tactician. The Venetians, who supplied a good half of all the ships involved, were led by Sebastiano Venier.
The position of the two fleets at the beginning of the battle. The Christian forces are to the left (west), with their six huge, cannon-laden galleasses in the center. Armed with dramatically more accurate guns than the Turks -- weapons designed by an Armenian engineer, Antonio Surian, in the Venice Arsenal -- the Venetians quickly disabled or damaged many of the enemy vessels virtually at the outset.
The two fleets engaged at 10:30 AM on October 7, in the waters outside the entrance to what is now called the Gulf of Corinth. The area was near a scattering of islets known as the Curzolari; for this reason the battle is also occasionally (pedantically) referred to as the Battle of the Curzolari.
The numbers involved vary so widely among the many accounts that I’ll just give them all and let you pick the ones you like best.
The League had 284 ships (or 195, or 300) of varying types — half of which were supplied by Venice — carrying 1,185 guns, 12,920 sailors, 43,000 rowers and 28,000 soldiers. The Ottomans had 277 ships but carried only 750 guns and 25,000 soldiers, including 12-15,000 Greeks taken prisoner for this purpose and 2,500 janissaries, the only troops equal to the Spanish infantry.
A contingent from Spelonga joined in, with a replica of the Turkish battle flag which one of their ancestors brought home from the battle. The original doesn't travel.
Approximate casualties: Whatever the true totals, the difference between the two sides is obvious.
The Holy League: 7,500 (or 9,000, 12,000, or 15,000) men, 12 (or 15) ships sunk and one captured.
The Ottomans: 30,000 (or 20,000) men, 8,000 taken prisoner, 113 ships sunk and 117 captured, some of which were in good enough condition to be used by the victors. The only prize the Turks snagged was one Venetian galley.
I’ll pause for a second to attempt to imagine what 45,000 casualties look like, especially when they all die in the space of five hours. The attempt has failed. Let’s go on.
The victory monument atop the entrance to the Arsenal in Venice. The inscription reads VICTORIAE NAVALIS MONUMENTUM MDLXXI. No further details needed.
Meanwhile, at Venice, the campanile of San Marco was being manned continually by lookouts awaiting some sign of the battle’s outcome. The Venetians sent word by their fastest galley, the Angelo, which entered the lagoon ten days later, on October 18. The instant that the lookout could make out that the ship was draped with Turkish flags, he cried “Victory!”
Every bell in the city began to ring. Total strangers kissed each other in the streets. Shops closed in celebration, some owners slapping signs on the doors saying “Closed due to the death of the Turks.” The debtors’ prison was emptied. Permission to wear masks was given. And so on and on. A triumphal arch was constructed over the entrance to the Arsenal, and every year on October 7 (feast-day of Santa Giustina), from 1572 till the fall of the Republic in 1797, the Doge and the government would go in procession to the church of Santa Giustina, where the captured Turkish standards were brought out for all to see.
The statue of Miguel Cervantes within the harbor walls was given by the Spanish government. In addition to the wreaths tossed into the water, one is usually placed at his feet, as well as at the memorial plaque on the nearby wall.
Another trophy — if one can call it that — of the war was Miguel Cervantes’s left hand. He fought at Lepanto aboard the ship Marquesa, and when another writer later derided him as being “old and one-handed,” he replied: “What I cannot help taking amiss is that he charges me with being old and one-handed, as if it had been in my power to keep time from passing over me, or as if the loss of my hand had been brought about in some tavern, and not on the grandest occasion the past or present has seen, or the future can hope to see. If my wounds have no beauty in the beholder’s eye, they are, at least, honourable in the estimation of those who know where they were received….”
So who were the real victors? Morale soared on the European side: It had finally been shown that the Ottomans could be defeated, something which after about 100 years had begun to appear unlikely. On the other hand, Venice never got Cyprus back. And although it was wonderful that they had destroyed the Turkish navy, it was back to its previous strength within a year.
“I would have you know the difference between your loss and ours,” the Grand Vizier Sokullu Mehmet Pasha told the Venetian emissary. “In wresting Cyprus from you, we deprived you of an arm; in defeating our fleet, you have only shaved our beard. An arm when cut off cannot grow again, but a shorn beard will grow all the better for the razor.”
All true. But the Ottomans never succeeded in conquering the Adriatic, which would have jammed the door open to many unhappy events. I consider that to be the verdict on Lepanto, and so did most of the delirious victors.
Let’s move up to last week. For the third year in a row, we were invited to participate in an hour-long show broadcast live on Greek television commemorating this event. Obviously nothing anyone can do today could match the event itself, so it came down to a kind of audio-visual creation heavy on symbolism (I think that’s what it was) and mood. And fireworks. You can never go wrong there.
The acrobat rehearsing, suspended over our boat.
Our assignment was to row around the tiny fortified harbor, providing a Venetian/nautical tinge while all sorts of things were happening around us: Strobe lights and projections on the stone walls enclosing the port, acrobats climbing long strips of fabric and creating dramatic human shadows that moved sort of like combatants, a procession of costumed Venetians from C.E.R.S., flames shooting from the battlements, as well as from a Croatian two-masted ship which also poured white fireworks into the sea, and finally, an acrobat in a white bodysuit suspended over the water who danced to a melancholy song which even though it was in Italian, I couldn’t understand. (Our material contribution was to carry the girl and her assistant to and from the point of performance.) Coming at the end, her silent contortions gave an elegiac quality to the event, which was almost immediately canceled out by the fireworks that followed.
The icon, now considered miraculous, of the Madonna of Nafpaktos, to which the Greeks prayed before and during the battle.
Entertaining as this was (and I have to say that the editions of 2008 and 2007 were much more elaborate and imaginative — evidently the economic crisis has bitten deep into the budget here), for me the much more important and moving ceremony occurred the following morning.
After a long commemorative Orthodox mass in the cathedral, a procession formed to march to the harbor: An armed honor guard and military band, a few bishops and other clergy and a large icon of the Madonna (who is credited, much more than Santa Giustina, for the victory), the mayor and city councilors, and representatives from most of the nations which contributed to the battle.
After a short speech by the mayor, and a series of prayers by the bishop, a moment of silence was called. I know this because suddenly a silence fell on the harbor and everyone in it which was something exceptional. This silence wasn’t just the absence of noise, it was as if the world had literally stopped. Whether you wanted to or not, your thoughts (mine, I mean) had to go straight to the battle and especially its victims, among whom I willingly remember the Turks, who naturally did not send a representative even though their troops were just as dead as ours.
The representative of Venice offers the city's wreath.
Then each nation’s official took a laurel wreath — I counted ten — and one by one, tossed it into the water. Last year this segment was enriched by a cannon blast before each one and the playing of that country’s national anthem by the military band, which I found tremendously affecting. This year, no cannon, and evidently not only money but even time was in short supply because after this brisk sequence the ceremony closed with only one piece of music, the Greek national anthem. We, as always, raised our oars in acknowledgment of the prayers and the anthem.
I’m not going to risk attempting to close with some profound summary. All you have to do is consider even the barest outlines of the conflict and then, as Job admonished his friends, “Be astonished, and lay your hand upon your mouth.”
This modest palazzo in Campo Santa Maria Formosa in Venice was the house of Sebastiano Venier, commander of the Venetian fleet. He was unanimously elected doge several years later, in 1577, at the age of 81.
The plaque on the facade reads: "Questa e' la casa di Sebastiano Venier Vincitore di Lepanto. La Marina Militare Italiana nel IV Centenario della Battaglia 7 ottobre 1971 pose." ("This is the house of Sebastiano Venier Victor of Lepanto. The Italian Navy placed this on the 400th anniversary of the battle 7 october 1971.")
