History | Venice: I am not making this up

Make way for the Befana

January 5, 2010 1 Comment

IMG_5564 befana comp For most of us, New Year’s Day represents the end of the holiday season. Not here. We still have the Epiphany to celebrate (January 6), and it comes swooping through, not so much in the person of the Re Magi (Three Kings) whom we recall brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus, but instead in the person of a broom-borne hag called the “Befana,” a name that got squeezed out of Epifania (Eh-pee-FAH-neeyah).

In Venice she is also sometimes referred to as the marantega barola (ma-RAHN-teh-ga ba-RO-la), or wizened old crone. In ordinary life you might hear a particularly obnoxious busybody referred to as a marantega, regardless of her age, though the implication of decrepitude would add an extra fillip of insult to a younger person.

But despite the unpleasant connotations of hagdom, the Befana is all smiles, a benevolent old biddy who flies by night and comes down the chimney (or through the keyhole) to fill with candy and little toys the stockings the children have left attached to the hearth mantelpiece or some other convenient place. (Bad children, at least in theory, will get pieces of coal, but bad children seem to have become only a holiday myth.)

IMG_5563 befana comp Her imminent arrival explains all the Halloween-like witches you will have seen cluttering pastry-shops, bakeries, bars and cafes, supermarkets, and anywhere else someone with small people might be likely to pass. Sometimes, but not always, she will be tied or stapled to a stocking already stuffed with assorted chocolates, chewing gum, hard candies, and any other little item that could send you into sugar shock.

This stocking — once a genuine article of clothing, now usually acquired prepackaged — is called a calza caena (KAL-za ka-EYN-ah). “Calza” means stocking, and “caena” is Venetian for catena, a word usually used to mean a chain, but which is also used in knitting.

“La Befana vien de note,” goes the local version of her classic little doggerel, “co le scarpe tute rote/vestita a la romana/viva viva la Befana.” (The Befana comes at night, with her shoes all falling apart, dressed like a Roman woman, long live the Befana.) The shoes are in tatters because she’s obviously poor, and she’s dressed like a ciociara, a woman not literally from the Eternal City but from an area of the Roman hinterland called the Ciociaria, where the farmers’ wives wore crude leather sandals, big skirts and a scarf tied around their head. (No pointed hats, thanks anyway.) Why characterize a universal character as coming from the fields of Lazio? I’ll have to get back to you on that. She just is.

IMG_5574 calza comp The fact that Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, and assorted other gift-givers have already come through town hasn’t made a dent in this old custom, and so Venetian children today can, at least theoretically, scorch the holiday earth from December 6 to January 6. The term “enough,” let alone “too many,” has never been known to apply to presents.

It bears repeating: All this bounty is a fairly recent phenomenon. Children of Lino’s vintage would get nuts in their stocking, and an orange was always stuffed down into the toe. He says some children really did get bits of coal. Homely simple items, mainly things that were good for you.

IMG_5587 befana comp But the children were hospitable — they left out refreshments for the flyby Befana: A plate of pasta e fasioi (pasta and beans) and a glass of red wine, just the thing to warm an old lady stuck out in the cold all night. The plate and glass were empty the next morning, thereby confirming her existence, but eventually any child began to make some calculations. If this Befana eats beans at every house, then (A) how does she avoid death by explosion and (B) how the hell does she get manage to get airborne?

I don’t know — though I sort of doubt — that kids leave out the beans and wine anymore. Maybe the Befana is watching her cholesterol by now. But as for the coal, never fear: Some shops sell a confection that looks like coal but is basically sugar darkened with something innocuous. Mustn’t upset the kids.

So fill up that calza caena, brace yourself for the last little holiday rampage, then you can finally put away the decorations, throw out that desiccated tree, and intone the appropriate incantation: L’Epifania/tute le feste porta via (Epiphany carries away all the holidays.)

IMG_5588 befana comp

IMG_5586 befana comp

Events, Food, History, Venetian-ness

Holidays, the end is in sight

December 31, 2009 1 Comment

Technically speaking, the holidays aren’t over yet; the long trajectory of festivities ends here on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, which I will tell you about in another post. But the end is in sight.

Here we hopscotch through December from saint to saint: St. Nicholas (Dec. 6), St. Lucy (Dec. 13), Christmas, St. Stephen (Dec. 26, known as Boxing Day in the Anglo world) and now today, St. Sylvester, or New Year’s Eve. Though the first two only get noticed by people who bear those names (or in the case of Lucy, have eye problems), the last three get more attention. At first it seems odd to refer to New Year’s Eve as “San Silvestro,” but you get used to it.

New Year’s Eve and/or Day are referred to as Capodanno, or “head” — or perhaps “boss” — “of the year.”

Christmas as we observe it is a fairly recent invention, developed (if not created outright) by people who want to sell things for the benefit of people who have extra money. Christmas cards and/or trees, Tiny Tim, Rudolph, even Santa would be undecipherable to our forebears, at least if they’re Venetian.

Like many events here, Christmas and New Year are the offspring of prosperity, and people of Lino’s vintage notice the difference. Not that they were more pious, though perhaps they were, but because for a long time the vicissitudes of life (such as two world wars) limited the common perception of what the holiday could entail. They stuck to the basics, and these did not include presents.

The simple "focaccia" isn't your best option if you want to save money, as they're hand-made in small numbers by local pastry wizards. Eighteen euros a kilo works out to $12 a pound.

“What presents?” Lino snorted. “Who had presents?” Christmas Eve? An ordinary night like any other. Christmas Day? You went to the special mass at 9:00 AM, then the entire family — and in those days that easily reached double digits — squeezed around the table and feasted on food that was at least slightly out of the ordinary. Tortellini (handmade by his mother and sisters) in slow-simmered meat broth was often the star. In the evening, roast veal and polenta, traditions we continue except for the “handmade” part. Lots of family racket, but pretty low on novelties, frivolities, or anything that required batteries or assembly.

Panettone? “It didn’t exist,” Lino stated. “It’s an invention that came after the war,” like so many things. His sisters might have made a “fugassa,” or focaccia — a simple raised cake full of butter and eggs. He doesn’t remember.

If you want panettone, you've got almost too much choice -- if such a concept exists anymore. Filled with candied fruit, or chocolate, or Grand Marnier, or Limoncello -- one local ice-cream vendor was even offering to stuff your panettone with ice cream. — If you want panettone, you've got almost too much choice -- if such a concept exists anymore. Filled with candied fruit, or chocolate, or Grand Marnier, or Limoncello -- one local ice-cream vendor was offering to stuff your panettone with ice cream.

He does remember one particular Christmas Eve, somewhere in the late Sixties or early Seventies. (Obviously his childhood was long gone.) He was sitting at dinner that evening at home when they began to hear ships’ whistles blowing. A lot. Finally he said, “Let’s go out and see what’s going on.”

They walked out to the Zattere and there, in the Giudecca Canal, was a tugboat shining its spotlight on the mast of another tug which was almost completely underwater. The light was to aid in the rescue attempt (fruitless) and also to warn other boats to keep clear.

There are two theories about the accident. Either the tug was towing a ship and the tension on the towline slackened somehow, causing the ship to run into the tug, or somehow the tension wasn’t kept steady and a sudden jerk of the line caused the tug to capsize. In any case, by Christmas morning the two victims still hadn’t been recovered.

As for New Year’s, Eve and Day, they passed virtually unremarked by anyone. At a certain point in history the midnight moment began to be marked by all the ships in the port of Venice blowing their horns (that must have sounded totally great). Fireworks? Special dinners out? Champagne? They got here tomorrow, as the saying goes. People had plain old dinner and went to bed. Me, I’d be just as glad to return to that approach; I hate having to pretend to celebrate, especially when I have no clue as to what, exactly, we’re supposed to be celebrating.

Or you can just take home several hundred of the classic sort.

For those who might want to imagine a festive New Year’s Eve dinner in Venice, too bad you’re missing out on what Arrigo Cipriani is laying on at Harry’s Bar. The newspaper was reporting on the general markdowns being offered by restaurants around the city even on this special meal, and made a point of noting that even Harry’s was giving a discount. This year the repast is costing a mere 500 euros [$716.66} per mouth, as opposed to last year’s 1000. Very high into the yikes zone even if the economy hadn’t burned up on re-entry.

For that little fistful of euros, diners will engulf champagne, caviar, truffle ravioli, tournedos, and the “dessert of the house,” which at that price ought to be garnished with whipped flakes of gold. I assume it won’t be Floating Island.

Despite my stated aversion to compulsory celebration, I have to say that I spent the most unforgettable New Year’s Eve of my life here in Venice. (You may say “Well sure — most beautiful city in the world,” etc. etc. That is a comment which does not take into account how repellent mass events can be in a city this small, especially when the mass is mainly composed of atrociously drunk people who think they’re having fun. Smashing glass bottles is almost as entertaining as setting off firecrackers. It would appear.)

It was the fateful passage between millennia, the last night of 1999 and first morning of 2000. We had dinner at home with two friends, Sarah from Washington and Caroline from London, then we bundled up and climbed into Lino’s little wooden topetta.

They sat in the center, while we rowed to the Bacino of San Marco. There was a surprising number of boats out (it wasn’t especially cold), but I guess it was that millennium aspect that drew them. As it drew us, because it’s the only time we’ve ever done this.

The fireworks began their aerial onslaught; I thought it was great to be right under them till I discovered that falling bits of blazing incendiary material are essentially little bombs. Moving down-range, we counted down to midnight, then we popped the bubbly — a large bottle of Veuve Clicquot, which Lino kept referring to as “French spumante,” no matter how many times I tried to straighten him out. I wish I could remember what kind soul had given it to us.

But this far I could have anticipated much of this. Being on the water at night is always special, ditto fireworks and friends. But I hadn’t anticipated what came next.

We were done with the toasting and the pyrotechnics. Time to go home. But we didn’t take the shortest route — Lino headed us toward the Piazza San Marco where the mobs were in full cry. Lights! Action! Barf and pee! Scream and hurl hard breakable things! Fling firecrackers and see if you can really damage something!

We rowed slowly past the Piazza and up the rio de la Canonica, past the Doge’s Palace, slipping apprehensively under the Ponte de la Paglia which was jammed with people who might have thought it would be fun to throw something (bottles, garbage, themselves) down into our boat.

As the sound of rioting faded behind us, we threaded our way along the network of dark, empty canals; the canals became darker and quieter as we moved deeper into the city. We glided between looming, slumbering palaces, and the only sound was the delicate Plff. Plff. of our oars and the barely perceptible melody of the water slipping under the boat. The silence seemed like something alive, like whatever remains inside a huge bell that’s still vibrating even when the tone has disappeared.

Venice seemed like an entirely different place, a shadow city hidden within the blare and clang of day. It was as if the city was lifting a veil as we passed, letting us discern, however faintly, the power and the grandeur that are concealed in a place that when the sun comes up is reduced to postcard cutouts. It was an elegant, seductive sort of gesture — if an entity so magnificent could evince anything so intimate. I could feel the veils being lowered, one by one, behind us. Nobody spoke.

Sometimes I'm not sure that it's not us that are the shadows here.

We came out into the Grand Canal, back to lights and noise and now. Much as I may hate the touristic mayhem, even on ordinary days, I’m not quite as upset by it as I once was, because I know that Venice has managed to elude our grasp. I won’t say that she’s waiting to come out again — we probably make that impossible.

It’s enough for me to know she’s still in there.

History

A Christmas Story

December 23, 2009 2 Comments

IMG_5314 xmas wreath comp The following was not written by me, nor is it set in Venice; it was written by a friend whose gifts far outstrip the recognition they have received. And because this small but perfect jewel has become part of my own personal Christmas tradition, I am giving it to you here. Happy Holidays to all.

THE LATECOMER

by George S. Nammack

It was after 10 o’clock on Christmas Eve and I was 12 and wearing my first long trousers. I never had been permitted to attend midnight mass, but I knew that 10:30 was the latest one could be sure of seating at St. Mary, Star of the Sea in Far Rockaway [NY]. After that, you hurried across the dark schoolyard to claim a folding seat in the Lyceum, actually the school’s auditorium, where you would participate in what was perceived to be a somehow second-cabin rite known as The Overflow Mass.

Mother had made her traditional pronouncement that those who chose to go to midnight services were in a state of less rectitude and grace than were those clear-eyed parishioners who led their scrubbed and shining families to the front pews on Christmas morning. My father, splendid in the swallowtail coat that he wore as well to medical society meetings, paced before the fire. He lectured and charmed in favor of the late mass and, finally, prevailed.

IMG_9504 xmas flowers comp It was five minutes before midnight when we were shown to our seats. Mr. Phelan, a huge detective who looked like the legendary John L. Sullivan and was certainly the heavyweight champion of Far Rockaway, was ushering. He smiled at my father and leaned in to speak. “Gee, Doc, you’re just under the wire. Sorry about the seats.”

“That’s all right, Eddie,” my father said. “Even the kings were late.”

The altar was centered on the stage, its snowy linens seeming to move in the dancing candlelight. On a raised platform of red and green two-by-fours, James O’Brien, known as far away as West Hempstead for his rendition of “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home,” was playing “Silent Night” on the small organ. Jockey-size and florid of complexion, he was blessed with a golden tenor.

At four minutes past 12, the popular veteran priest, Father Shine, commenced the celebration of midnight mass. Following communion and the Special Christmas Collection — “I trust we’ll have a lovely soft collection…I don’t want to be hearing any silver!” — Mr. O’Brien launched into his showstopper, Adolph Adam’s beautiful “O Holy Night.”

We sang along, but softly, because it was Mr. O’Brien’s moment. As he reached the somewhat imperative line about falling on your knees, the back door of the Lyceum opened to admit a javelin of frigid wind and, right behind it, Mr. Mitt Gaffney, who lived in an unheated bungalow near the beach and on handouts from saloon keepers, the kitchen ladies at the hospital and the limited largesse of Long Island Rail Road commuters, many of whom had been his classmates in better days.

He stood there for a moment, listening to Mr. O’Brien and filling the already close atmosphere with the unmistakable aroma of cheap muscatel. Mr. Phelan’s neck was turning purple as he looked at Mitt Gaffney’s head. It was covered with a drooping red Santa Claus cap, the peak of which terminated in a once-white pom-pom that fell across the left shoulder of his stained Army overcoat like a medal awarded for congenital innocence.

Mr. Phelan whispered as only a 300-pound man can when he needs to make a point but doesn’t want to disturb the world at large. He said, “Mother of God, Mitt, you’re late and mass is nearly over, and you got a helluva bun on and take off that damned hat in church!”

“Go easy, Eddie, easy,” smiled Mitt, removing his droll topping and stuffing it into a pocket. “We’re not in church, we’re at The Overflow and I just overflowed in for a peek.”

Mr. Phelan said, “I’ll give you a peek and more, Mitt, if you don’t shut up and behave yourself. Now hush!”

IMG_9665 xmas angel comp The latecomer managed to balance himself behind the last row. As the last lingering note rose in the accepted direction of Paradise, Mitt Gaffney stepped into the main aisle and acknowledged Mr. O’Brien’s tour de force. “Bravo, Jimmy! Bravo! You sounded just like an angel! Honest, kiddo, an angel! A real angel!”

Mitt was teetering from side to side, applauding his friend, his enormous freckled hands crashing into each other. Mr. O’Brien stood and stared through his rimless glasses at this display of uninvited support. His expression was akin to the kind you see at the zoo, when a child sees a rhinoceros for the first time. I believed he was about to faint.

The stunned faithful turned as one to fix the speaker with glares, and Mr. Phelan was puffing back from the front of the auditorium. My father reached out and gently but firmly navigated Mr. Mitt Gaffney into the only empty seat in our row.

The glares gave way to head-shaking, then to snickers, which built to a great wave of relieving laughter. My father put a protective arm around the old Army overcoat and told its frail occupant to be quiet.

Father Shine took a deep breath and spoke. His brogue was as soft as rain on pebbles, and his large blue eyes seemed to hold all of the light. “All right, then, settle down all of you.

IMG_2281 xmas madonna comp “Given the fact that I found his somewhat-demonstrative approbation a bit unusual, given the fact that in these parts we’re not given to applauding the sacred music, I must say that I wholeheartedly concurred with Mr. Gaffney’s appreciation of Mr. O’Brien’s divinely inspired performance. You did sound just like an angel, Jimmy. And Mitt, if you’re to clap and bellow again in church — and you’re in church, Lyceum or not — I’ll have Mr. Phelan cart you off to the hoosegow. Now then, the mass is ended. Go in peace. God bless you all, and drive safely.”

On the way home, my mother said that the interruption was disgraceful, but my father said that things don’t happen unless they’re supposed to and that Mr. Mitt Gaffney had brought a unique gift to midnight mass. Not only that, but he had caused everyone to open it and share it right there at The Overflow, and pity those over at the main church who missed out.

Later, in bed, I thought about the red Santa cap and its almost-white pom-pom, and Mr. O’Brien’s facial expression, and Father Shine’s forgiving eyes, and my father. I gazed out into the starry night and wondered if Mr. O’Brien would sing one day as an angel in Heaven and if Mr Mitt Gaffney would be there to applaud him, and I thought that their chances were pretty good.

IMG_5513 xmas creche comp

History, Problems, Venetian-ness

Turkish not-so-delight

December 17, 2009 7 Comments

There are many things, I admit it, that deeply fascinate me about Turkey and one of them is its complicated linkage over the centuries with Venice. Polar opposites, one might think, until one begins to look closer.

As I was expatiating on this theme recently, I neglected to mention a few of the manifestations of this linkage lurking here. And one of them does not show Venice in her best light.

First: Two steps from Campo San Barnaba is a short, narrow street (with bridge) named the Calle (and Ponte) de le Turchette. If you were to guess, based on your elementary Italian, that this means “Street of the Little Turkish Girls,” you would be right.

IMG_5141 turchette comp Tradition maintains that in the era before the Casa dei Catechumeni was established to accommodate instruction in the Roman Catholic faith, there was a house here where Turkish women (“Turchette”), taken prisoner in assorted battles, were kept. Their time was spent mainly in being converted to Christianity. Or not. No word on the rate of conversion, or whether conversion was considered optional, or what the consequences were for not converting, at least not by the point where I stopped seeking information.

According to the estimable Giuseppe Tassini, writing in Curiosita’ Veneziane, a document in the Scuola di San Rocco states that the confraternity possesses a house in the parish of San Barnaba, “in Calle Longa, where the Turchette are housed.” That’s all I can tell you about this, though every time I pass this way I admit that images of exotic females, enclosed in another sort of harem, wander through my mind.

Second: An even more intriguing Middle-Eastern, let’s say, element is a mute patera (PAH-teh-ra) affixed to the side of a house behind the former hospital of the Incurabili. (These “incurables” were mostly syphilitics, if you’re wondering.)

This patera is very easy to miss, being so uncharacteristically high. Looking up is always a good idea when walking around in any city, especially here.

Patere were typically circular plaques carved in low relief on Istrian stone, often showing animals, which were placed on buildings generally from the 10th to the 12th century, though a few date till the 15th. These images were intended to ward off evil.

The one that fascinates me, though, has a very different vibe. It shows a cross, whose base is in the suggested form of a sword, standing upon a crescent.

The conclusions one might draw from this are fairly obvious, but that’s what annoys me — because so often the obvious turns out to be excitingly wrong. There is also the curious factor of the points of this crescent not being identical. So far, however, I haven’t been able to learn anything about it. But there it is.

IMG_5137 patera 2 crop comp

A small digression on Turkishness: Ever since maize began to come to Italy from the Americas in the 1500’s, it has borne the name granoturco, or Turkish grain. There are various hypotheses for this, none of them definitive, but one of the more credible ones refers to the custom of lumping all sorts of foreign things together under the generic label “Turkish.” A relic of this habit applies here today regarding the Slavic women who come from Eastern Europe to work as caretakers of the elderly; even though they may come from Ukraine, Romania, or Moldova, I’ve heard at least a few Venetians refer to them as “Turche.”

Now we come to a longish street whose official name is “Barbarie de le Tole,” but which I think of as the “Street of the Kebab Joints.” And here the theme of Turkishness becomes less attractive.

There are some 20,000 students in Venice, a total of the enrollments in the two universities (Ca’ Foscari, the University of Venice, and the I.U.A.V., or University of Architecture). There is also a noticeable number of immigrants in the city, some from the Middle East or North Africa. And there is also a growing group of tourists who are getting by on a squeaking budget. These are all people who typically seek nourishing and/or good food at a very small price. So from pizza-by-the-slice (Italian, even if not very civilized), the choice has broadened out to include doner kebab, or what in the U.S. is often called by its Greek name, gyros. Foreign. Suddenly this changes things.

Whether or not you read Turkish (or German -- notice the subhead on this banner), the image itself translates as "good cheap food." — Whether or not you read Turkish, the image itself translates as "good cheap food."

Doner kebab was invented in Erzurum, eastern Turkey, and since the Seventies it has become a common and familiar fast food in most European countries. The making and selling of it are virtually always in the hands of Turkish individuals.

But all of a sudden Venice isn’t happy with these little places. I can’t say whether the kebabs’ precursors were available in the declining years of the Venetian Republic, but considering the spectacular variety of ethnicities and creeds which were to be found milling around the streets and markets and waterfronts of Venice back in the Old Days, it wouldn’t surprise me.

In the past decade or so, the subject of immigration (to Europe, not only to Venice) has become an increasingly tormented one politically, economically, and socially. Considering the multi-cultural foundation of this town, any anti-foreign sentiment is in some ways difficult to justify — not that one can’t understand it. This is a theme which I will dissect at another time.

But on December 4, the Gazzettino announced that the mayor has signed an ordinance forbidding the granting of any new licenses for kebab joints until 2012. The reasons given for this are many; they bob like ornaments hanging on a tree which has been hollowed by termites. The reasons as stated are:

The proliferation of these establishments and the consumption of their product on-site contribute to the “impoverishment” of the typical local places, as well as of the architectural and environmental quality of the city “due to the particular nature of their furnishing and equipment,” and
The “incompatibility” of the opening of new pizza/kebab joints with the “conservation of the artistic patrimony” and the “typicality” (if there is such a word) of the historic center, and
Opening such places in certain points in the city conduces to the “maximum vulnerability of the cultural and touristic profile” of the city (whatever that might mean), and
That anyway there are already enough such places to satisfy the demand, so no need for more.

And who proposed this extraordinary measure? Not any of the assorted Superintendents of the Artistic/Historic/Cultural/Archaeological Heritage; nor the director of the Academy of Fine Arts, nor the Guggenheim Collection, nor anyone from the battalions of professors of art, history, or even tourism, if you will, though any of those protagonists might be able to make a reasonable case. Not a voice from the syndics of the Venice Atheneaum. Nobody from any sphere or stratum of the cultural or artistic universe here. Not even a wail from Augusto Salvadori, the City Councilor for Tourism and Protection of Traditions and Decorum.

Despite its being couched in cultural and historic and artistic terms, the proposal was in fact made by Giuseppe Bortolussi, the plain old City Councilor for Productive Activity and Commerce. Therefore one can interpret these cultural concerns in economic terms, in favor of the small businessmen who are the competitors of the kebabists.

And the decree will cover 13 of the 24 most important touristic points of the city, including the Rialto, the area of San Marco (where there is already a flourishing McDonald’s), the train station, and the Accademia. They might just as well have said “everywhere,” considering that they have stated that there are already enough such places to satisfy the demand.

I thought capitalism posited that the consumers, not the city councilors, were the ones who get to decide which businesses live and which die. And if it’s possible to determine at what point there are “enough” kebab joints, it ought to be possible to determine at what point there are “enough” shops selling glass and Carnival masks, which a stroll around the city reveals as being somewhere around 249,327. Enabling infinite choice in souvenirs (good!) doesn’t seem to translate into infinite choice in foodstuffs (not good!).

This ordinance looks strangely like an effort to protect the restaurateurs, not the city, from impoverishment. To herd the wandering tourist seeking sustenance back into the trattorias and restaurants where the prices can sometimes go so high, at least compared to the value received, that they practically glow in the dark.

But I’d like to close this little cultural pilgrimage with the observation that hypocrisy evidently provides more fertile terrain than volcano slopes after an eruption if you want to grow a bumper crop of contradictions. All those affirmations of protecting the artistic and historic nature of the city? One hardly knows where to start to list the examples of how that concept has been violated.

I’ll provide just a few random snaps, chosen mainly by their convenience. Anyone who can explain why these alterations are permissible (I’ll spare you the details of the laws designed to “protect” the artistic and architectural nature of the city) is eagerly invited to enlighten me.

The "Danieli Excelsior" (center) was built as an addition to the Danieli Hotel, and wedged between the hotel, formerly a palazzo of the Dandolo family (DATE TK) and the New Prisons (DATE TK). — The "Danieli Excelsior" (center) was built in the 1950s as an addition to the Danieli Hotel, and wedged between the hotel, formerly a palazzo of the Dandolo family (late 1400s) and the New Prisons (1589-1616).

Somebody thought these balconies would be just the thing on this already unattractive modern residence, right next to the church of the Santo Spirito (1506).

Then there is this construction, housing the University of Venice's Department of European and Post-Colonial Studies, next to the TKTK. — Then there is this construction, housing the University of Venice's Department of European and Post-Colonial Studies, next to the Gothic palace now housing the Capitaneria di Porto (Port Authority).

Tramontin and Sons are one of the few squeri still building gondolas in Venice, and their workshop shows the traditional setup, from the wooden-chalet workshop to the ramp sliding down into the water. — Tramontin and Sons (1884) is one of the few squeri still building gondolas in Venice, and it shows the traditional setup, from the wooden-chalet workshop to the ramp sliding down into the water.

Right next door to Tramontin is the squero Daniele Bonaldo, which used to be its identical twin. I watched its inexplicable transformation from the traditional layout (he kept the wooden chalet workshop) into a major boatyard for motorboats. The cement platform covers the beaten-earth ramp, the hydraulic winch was unknown to his forebears, and of course the boats have nothing at all to do with gondolas.

This is the headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia (Venice Savings Bank) in Campo Manin. They say it's called Palazzo Nervi-Scattolin, but it doesn't resemble anything like what most people would call a Venetian palace. — This is the headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia (Venice Savings Bank) in Campo Manin. It's called Palazzo Nervi-Scattolin (1972), not for conjoined noble families but for the two architects, who stated openly that they didn't intend to create a "false antique." They succeeded.