History | Venice: I am not making this up

History, Nature, Problems, Venetian-ness, Water

Watermarks: The sign of “C”

August 13, 2009 3 Comments

It may be that your eye is not drawn wallward as you stroll along the canals of Venice when the tide is low.

Perhaps you don’t find the mats of squishy green clinging to the building foundations very appealing. Perhaps you don’t wish to notice how many small life forms are scurrying around, unhindered by that pesky water. Perhaps there is a general sort of sliminess that reminds you uncomfortably of just how biological the Venetian environment is, and how little the lagoon cares about posing for you and your romantic photographs.

But let’s say those things don’t bother you; let’s say you’re curious to find out what’s beneath the waterline, or almost. If you look carefully, you may very well see this:

This incised capital C with the line beneath it is called the “Comune Marino” (hence the “C”), which roughly means “average sea.” Or perhaps “sea average.” This one, as it happens, is in the canal just outside our little hovel.

Water level measurements were formalized in Venice in 1440 when the Water Authority (Magistrato alle Acque) began to measure the upper level of wet algae on canal embankments by carving the letter “C,” which indicated the normal high-tide level. Water fosters certain kinds of algae which flourish in an “intertidal zone”, which is alternately wet and dry, and the line of algae corresponds to the level of water. Obviously.

So “Comune Marino” refers to the line created by the algae, a line which clearly indicates the upper limit of the tide.

Good to know, but why? Because there are many situations in which an engineer would want to know where the average upper limit would be — if he was planning to build a bridge nearby, for example, or even an entire building.

So far, so general. Keep in mind, though, that in each place the “C” is a marker of the average sea level in that canal at that point. Its height only matters in relation to what’s next to it — the water level will be “high” (or low) compared to a building foundation or embankment. If the “C” appears to be going down (or the algae to be going up, like elevators in a French farce) it might indicate that the building is subsiding, or even that the canal is silting up and becoming shallower. Factors such as these all bear some influence on where the average sea level will be in that place and whether you find it innocuous or annoying.

A look at the mark when the tide is out. This illustrates the difficulty of answering the frequent question, "How deep are the canals?" As in, when the tide is high, or when it's low?

An analysis of the displacement of the “algal belt” also gives engineers some idea of the long-term trend of apparent rising of the sea level. This is a subject that is far too great for this little post, but I merely note that the algae is playing its part in informing the world about the state of Venice.

Don’t be too quick, though, to think that just because there’s some algae above the “C” that the city is sinking inexorably into the lagoon. The algae has its own growing period (late winter to early autumn) and if the average high-tide level should rise one year, for one or many of several reasons, the line of algae will also rise. If it should go down the next year, there will be less algae at the previous level. Exceptional peaks in the high-tide level may cause temporary new growth, but it won’t necessarily survive the sunshine and dryness that returns when the tide level goes down.

Algae growth is also influenced by whether its location is on a sunny or shady side of the building, or whether the stone or brick it’s inhabiting is particularly porous.

Field observations have shown that the fluctuation in the height of the “algal front” is no more than 2 cm (7/10ths of an inch).

So all is well? Not really. One factor the Venetian engineers of 1440 didn’t have to deal with was “motondoso” — that’s a polite way of saying “water constantly splattering from the waves caused by motorboats.”

I’ll be devoting plenty of attention to motondoso on a future page, but I recommend that you draw conclusions very carefully about water level based solely on the line of algae. It’s highly likely that whatever spot you’re looking at is getting drenched by waves day and night, encouraging algae in an extravagant way, something that wasn’t happening back when they were busy carving “C’s” all over town.

The constant and extreme "motondoso" in the Giudecca Canal has created the perfect environment for algae on what used to be considered dry land. Do not ever step on this kind of algae, it's more slippery than a slice of raw bacon. — The constant and extreme "motondoso" in the Giudecca Canal has created the perfect environment for algae on what used to be considered dry land, so its presence here doesn't tell you anything useful about average sea level. Do not ever step on this kind of algae, it's more slippery than a slice of raw bacon.

The Daily Trivia: Regular measurements with instruments began in the 1870s. In 2004, mean sea level was found to be 25 cm (9 inches) higher than it was in 1897. Yet all water-level measurements continue to be based on the mean sea level in 1897.

We like to cling to the old ways here. Or something.

History, Venetian-ness

Welcome to the neighborhood

August 12, 2009 6 Comments

Via Garibaldi used to be a canal, which you can tell by the white stone border on each side. It contains everything needful for human life, including two pharmacies. The fact that they both stay in business tells me something about the neighborhood but I'm not sure what.

If someone in Venice were to ask me where I live, the generic answer would be “Castello,” which is the name of the sestiere, or one of the six neighborhoods into which Venice is divided. But that’s just a little too generic, considering that Castello is fairly large and has several hundred little subsets with all sorts of variations ranging from the sublime to the moderately mystifying.

The more precise answer is “Via Garibaldi.” We don’t actually live right there — we’re down beyond the end of it. But it’s an answer which represents not only geographical coordinates and a zip code, but an entire biosphere of its own with its own history and climate and fauna, a zone which to Venetians of other sestieri still connotes verging on the exotic, even vaguely hazardous.

Carnival means the street is clogged with kids, the only difference from every day is that they're in costume. Otherwise, it's just craziness as usual. — Carnival means the street is clogged with kids, the only difference from every other day being that they're in costume. Otherwise, it's just chaos as usual.

Once, when we were living in Dorsoduro, we overheard a mother snapping at her kid: “Stop shouting! You sound just like somebody from Castello!” And when we moved away — to Castello, of all places — Lino could hardly believe how far down in the world he had come. To his relatives, he might as well have gone to Tasmania. In fact, Tasmania would have made some sense. But Castello?

Many, if not most, people who visit Venice think of the city of palaces and monuments, and maybe also some trendy boutiques and clever little galleries. Our part of Venice is a gristly precinct beyond and behind the Arsenal. The Arsenal was the shipyard where Venice’s fleets were built, the foundation on which Venetian power — economic, military, political — rested. It’s thanks to the Arsenal that all those palaces and monuments exist, so Castello doesn’t have to apologize to anyone if it has chosen to remain in its primordial state. During Venice’s Great Days there were as many as 10,000 people working in the Arsenal, and their dwellings and relatives surrounding it constituted what amounted to a company town. Although very few, if any, locals still work in the Arsenal, I’m convinced there are people here who still haven’t discovered fire.

A member opens the clubhouse of the Mutual Aid Society of Carpenters and Caulkers, a flourishing remnant of the old Arsenal days when the workers had only each other to turn to for help.

If Venice isn’t a place for everybody, Castello is even less so. And Via Garibaldi is the axis of a Hogarthian world where the men’s bodies swarm with tattoos; where men and women alike use hand-hewn phrases which can’t be translated and shouldn’t be repeated, and their rampant children have two basic ways of communicating: Yelling and crying. They’re a lot like London’s East Enders (denizens of another once-great seaport enclave) — tough, practical, unromantic yet sentimental homebodies to whom family and neighborhood are the universe, where grown men call each other “love” and women call each other “girls.” It’s not that they don’t know there’s a world out there, they just don’t find it all that interesting.

I love Venice in a complicated way that I don’t understand very well. In the midst of the obvious beauty and grandeur and all, the city is also composed of so many aspects which verge on ugliness but which, strangely, also have their own sort of allure. Nelson Algren once wrote that “It isn’t hard to love a town for its greater and lesser towers … but you never truly love it till you can love its alleys too.” You discover this in unexpected moments and glimpses, where she doesn’t mind you seeing her without her girdle: no excuses, no apologies.

The “alleys” would be out here, with the ingenious, illegal, improvised sewer outflows, and the “What, me worry?” deposits of dog poop and the hand-lettered signs vilifying the anonymous neighbor who has left his bag of garbage under your window, and the mismatched lifelong friends in the bar shouting at each other — the one who’s right and the one who’s wrong — about something that happened years ago. In fact, they’re both right. Or wrong.

What happens is this: People put out plastic bags of garbage long before the collection is due to begin. Sometimes they do this on a Saturday afternoon, which means the bags will sit there till Monday morning. This time frame gives the seagulls plenty of time to bust open the bags and scavenge. Now the pigeons have started to take up the habit. Everyone knows this, including the people who put out their bags, bags which would be collected from their very own doorstep, but which they prefer to bring secretly to this anonymous corner. It's so stupid it's almost beautiful. — What happens is this: Some people put out plastic bags of garbage long before the collection is due to begin. Sometimes they do this on a Saturday afternoon, which means the bags will sit there till Monday morning, thereby giving the seagulls plenty of time to bust open the bags and scavenge. Now the pigeons have started to take up the habit as well. Everyone knows this, including the people who put out their bags, bags which would be collected from their very own doorstep, but which they prefer to bring secretly to this anonymous corner. It's so stupid it's almost beautiful.

This is not nostalgie de la boue; many things about life down here in the bilges range from infuriating to only slightly flinch-worthy. Then there are the aspects you can’t easily categorize — say, the septic tank somewhere on the other side of our canal which for far too long desperately needed pumping out. When we had company for dinner I used to pray that the wind wouldn’t shift. They say you can get used to anything, but I’m here to tell you: Not that.

I was walking down the via Garibaldi one early evening; there was a middle-aged Venetian couple coming toward me.

There had been a few airplane crashes that month: One in the sea just outside Palermo, another that hit near Athens, now one in Venezuela somewhere.

Anyway, I reach earshot just as the woman is saying to her husband, “Not me. I’ll never go on an airplane. Forget it.”

He says, “What about a ship?”

“Not even a ship. I’m staying home, I’m not going anywhere. If I die, I’m going to die right here in Via Garibaldi.” (Wait a minute — “If” you die?).

That’s what the true voice of a neighborhood sounds like — especially this one. Via Garibaldi to the bitter end.

I’m with her.

You'll always run into somebody to talk to -- or about -- on Via Garibaldi.

Food, History

Street Names: Refreshing

August 11, 2009 2 Comments

There are four places in Venice which share a mystic link, which is discernible only to the initiated. The initiation will now proceed:

The "'Passage Under a House' of the Waters"

The “waters” in this street name are not those of the adjoining canal, you may be glad to know.

They were the delightful iced drinks which were sold in shops often called botteghe da acque, or “shops of the waters.” Such a shop was doing great business here in 1566, run by a pair of brothers, Alvise and Girolamo Giusto.

In 1724, a guidebook stated that “The best chocolate, coffee, refreshing frozen waters, and other such drinks are made and sold in the Calle delle Acque, near the Ponte dei Baratteri.” Right here, in other words.

These places were not unlike the cafes we know today; they were often small, crowded, loud, and attractive to gamblers. (There are still assorted joints around town where little old men sit all day playing cards and shouting at each other, but their drinks usually involve some kind of alcohol, and it’s not particularly frozen, either.) On November 10, 1756 a decree forbade gambling in this very locale, which leads me to suspect that things had gotten even further out of hand than was usual.

Frozen beverages require ice, which was made and sold in various places around the city. Older Venetians have no trouble remembering the boats loaded with large blocks of ice, which the men who rowed the boats would haul ashore wrapped in sheets of coarse hemp to whatever customer had ordered it. The block went into the refrigerator — in America it was simply called an icebox — where it kept the food cold (or cool, anyway) until it had melted away, dripping into the pan below.

In 1661, when this street was mentioned in a property document, the sale of ice was a semi-monopoly of the coffee business. This is not surprising, considering that the coffee-house was where the iced drinks were made.

While we’re discussing potables, you also had the option of something stronger, particularly grappa and its relatives, distilled liquids near which one should not play with matches.

The spelling of this street name is a bit eccentric; it ought to be acquavite, or “water of the vine,” as grappa and some of its relatives are made by distilling either wine or grape residue (vine, stems, seeds, skins, etc.), while aquavit is made from grain. But as the word has also been transmogrified into acqua vitae, or “water of life” (“life” being “vita“), we won’t quibble. I guess they know how to name their own streets.

And who had the concession to sell these shots of liquid fire? The coffee-house owners again. In 1711, in the street above, near the church of the Gesuiti, there was just such an establishment being run by a certain Elia Giannazzi. By 1773 there were 218 shops in Venice specializing in acquavite. Life was hard, winter was long, it kept you going.

A very Venetian product which Giannazzi and his confreres would also have sold was rosolio. Still made today in various forms, it is a liqueur made of rose petals which is often used as a base for other liqueurs. I’m not sure what would happen if you asked for rosolio in a cafe or bar today; you’d probably have better luck asking for one of its siblings, such as limoncello or maraschino.

A note on alcohol: You will frequently read that alcoholism is hardly known in Italy because wine is such an integral part of the culinary and social culture. Children start sipping wine at an early age, at meals, and so it is assumed that they are immune to excess. However, these cliches do not acknowledge the popularity and omnipresence of what are generally termed super-alcoolici, or hard liquor, especially with people living along Italy’s northern rim where mountain traditions often involve making and consuming highly inflammable liquids.

Young people today in Italy may or may not drink wine with their meals, but increasing numbers of them will almost certainly be binge-drinking hard liquor in discos and bars on the weekend and then attempting to drive home. In Venice, this often means using a motorboat, probably without any lights on, usually at high speed. More often than you’d wish, you read about some adolescent who never made it because he “painted himself on a piling,” as they say here. Or dying by alcohol poisoning. And in case you’re tempted to similarly romanticize the seemingly so-grown-up approach to alcohol in France , which like Italy shares the stereotpical image of the jovial family, children included, tranquilly drinking wine out in the garden with their baguettes and challenging cheeses and all, I merely note that France has the highest rate of alcoholism in the world. So, easy with the cliches, here as everywhere. Nothing is simple.

And so we come to the fountainhead of all these concoctions: The cafetier, who sold and prepared coffee to be consumed on the spot and who, as we have seen, had his finger in the ice and booze businesses as well.

Coffee has a long and glorious history in Venice; Venetian merchants first recorded its use in Turkey in 1585, and began to sell it in Venice in 1638, whence the enthusiasm for coffee-houses spread across Europe. The Caffe Florian in the Piazza San Marco opened on December 29, 1720, and makes a good case for being the oldest coffee house in continuous operation.

The “mystic link” I mentioned above is therefore revealed to be coffee. The coffee-house owners and/or operators managed a very large slice of the liquid refreshment business in Venice, and while Venetian coffee doesn’t enjoy the fame of its Neapolitan or Roman cousins, I’m willing to call it the water of life. Especially first thing in the morning.

Events, History

Saga of the seven martyrs

August 3, 2009 1 Comment

Like the rest of the city, the long promenade along the lagoon from the Arsenal to the Giardini (public gardens) has experienced assorted mutations over the centuries.

This stretch of waterfront, some 100 years ago or more, was a tiny industrial landscape lined with boatyards sloping down muddy inclines into the water. Did I say “boats”? I also meant “ships.” This was a serious place where serious, unglamorous, important work got done.

But by the Thirties the boatyards were mostly moribund, and in 1937 they were demolished to make way for this corniche which was dubbed the “Riva dell’ Impero,” or “riva of the empire.” That would have been the one Mussolini intended to refound along the lines of the earlier Roman version.

But after the episode of August 3, 1944, the name was changed to the Riva dei Sette Martiri (the riva of the seven martyrs).

This is the beginning of the Riva dell'Impero, approximately at the point where the executions took place, and the small crowd is ready for the speeches.

It happened like this: The final phases of World War II in Venice were very tense, marked by an increasing number of events involving partisan resistance and reprisals. In this case, we skip almost immediately to the reprisal stage.

The Cronaca di Venezia recounted the story on July 1, 1945, on the eve of the first anniversary of the event in question. As with any story involving the word “martyr,” it’s not one that will make you smile.

Here is a transcript of the story, published in the Gazzettino a few years ago, translated by me:

“At dawn on 3 August 1944, a group of houses which extend from the beginning of the then-Riva dell’Impero to the limits of the Giardini was assaulted by the German soldiers. All of the inhabitants had to leap out of bed and let themselves be searched, mutely witnessing, astonished, the fanatical search for arms. Everything was thrown in the air, trampled, and often, in their rage, destroyed.

“Amazed, everyone asked themselves what could have happened, the reason for such a furor. They came to know later that that night [i.e., the night of August 1], the crew of a German torpedo ship moored at the Riva had abandoned themselves to an orgy and that the German sentinel had been offered, many times, wines and liquors. People overheard ‘evviva’ and other toasts exchanged between the crew and the sentinel.

“A few days later, it became known that the sentinel, drunk, had fallen in the water, and had been pulled out, and that no traces of any firearm or any other sign that could prove the cause of his death could be found on his body.

“But it was too late. The firing squad and the revenge had already taken place.

“That morning, 500 men of the neighborhood, after having been compelled to stand immobile for more than two hours on the riva with their faces against the walls of the houses along the left side of the via Garibaldi, were taken to the riva and made to watch the execution of seven hostages who had been taken from the prison of Santa Maria Maggiore.

“A little before the massacre, the Germans had erected two poles on the riva, between which a rope had been strung.

“The scaffold is ready. A motor launch from the prison arrives with the seven victims: Bruno Degasperi, 20; the brothers Alfredo and Luciano Gelmi, respectively 20 and 28, all from Trento; Girolamo Guasto, 20, from Agrigento; Aliprando Armellin, 23, from Vercelli but residing in Mestre; Alfredo Viviani, 36, born and living in Venice; Gino Conti, 46, from Cavarzere.

“The prison chaplain, mons. D’Andrea, hears their confessions and administers Communion. The butcher [executioner] offers them all a cigarette, which they accept. The few minutes which pass between lighting them and their disappearance seems eternal. How many people lining the riva or immobile at the windows are observing with terror the tragic scene.

“Now the seven unhappy ones are tied, with arms extended as if on a cross, to the rope stretched between the two poles. Their backs are toward the Lagoon. The sentence of death is read.

“A German official turns toward the 500 selected citizens and reads, in Italian: ‘During the night between August 1 and 2, by the hand of someone unknown, a sentinel of the German navy was assassinated during the fulfillment of his duty. The German Command has determined to apply the reprisal of war, for which in your presence these seven persons will be shot, guilty of terroristic acts; after which we will take from among you 150 hostages whose fate will depend on the outcome of the current inquest.’

“The chaplain extends the crucifix to each of the seven victims to kiss and the 24 rifles are aimed at their chests. Behind the firing squad the chaplain holds up the crucifix, on which the eyes of those who are about to die are fixed — and who give their last desperate cry, ‘Avenge us!’ A German officer raises his hand and then lets it fall, shouting ‘Fire!’

A rendering of the event is displayed to refresh the memory.

“The thunderous volley strikes even the rope itself, which breaks, leaving the poor bodies to fall heavily to the ground. A shot from the pistol to each temple, a few other shots to those who are in agony.

“The sacrifice is complete. In the light of the rising sun not even the echo of their last desperate appeal remains. The pavement of the riva is strewn with large bloodstains. All eyes are fixed on those vermilion stains, and from every heart arises a vow of revenge.

“The bodies of the Martyrs are placed on a boat and taken to the cemetery.

“To remove the clots of blood, teeth, and brain matter from the pavement, the Germans give brooms and buckets of water to the innocent children of the neighborhood.

“Then the selection is made from the 500 men and about 150 hostages are taken to the prison to await the results of the inquest.”

img_0786-martiri-10-comp1 — "The sacrilegious Fascist factionism wished, The barbaric Teutonic hand struck" (then the names); "May the light of your martyrdom illumine the way of the people reborn to liberty" (and the date). Evidently the candles were an afterthought, seeing as they effectively conceal the date being commemorated.

Later, they put up a very nice stone tablet, with seven symbolic electric candles, one for each sacrificial lamb, which are never illuminated. It’s true that they were unjustly condemned, but one also remembers that if they were in prison it’s possible that they were not, as they say here, the “shinbone of a saint.” Perhaps they were guilty of political crimes, or of homicide, or of resistance (which would cover both of the preceding misdemeanors).

But they definitely were not involved in the murder of any drunken German sentinel, and forming a cleanup squad of children has to be just about the worst thing in this entire appalling story. But then again, it wouldn’t be war without stupidity and death. It would just be another day in the most beautiful city in the world.

Now it’s today. Every year, on the anniversary of this event, the local Communist Party club organizes a commemorative ceremony. At six o’clock this evening they formed up their procession, and walked first to the monument outside the Giardini to the monument to the partisans to render homage.

Then they walked up the Riva dei Sette Martiri to the plaque and placed the large laurel wreath, and two large arrangements of scarlet roses, beneath it. There were banners, there were speeches.

A small mismatched group of onlookers/participants/curious bystanders watched and listened, and was photographed by various people, including me. (I apologize for the quality, I snapped these with my cell phone.)

Before the rituals begin, there's the hard work of setting up the accoutrements.

I turned around to look at the audience and there was a mountain of ship steaming ponderously past: the aptly named Costa Fortuna. I mean “aptly” considering the caliber of fortune which the seven martyrs (and the German sentinel, and the children) had been allotted. It looked as if the total passenger payload (2,716) was lined up on the brim of the topmost deck watching the panorama of Venice slip past as they headed out to sea. I suppose that we and our little banners looked as tiny to them as they did to me. I wonder if anybody but me happened to notice the empty silent space separating their moment here and that of the men whose last was spent at almost the same spot.

When thoughts like that begin to merge in my brain, it’s time to leave. So I headed down via Garibaldi toward home, just as the first gust of cold air hit my back. The wind had been rising all afternoon, but when I felt the temperature plunge suddenly I knew it was time to get going.

Ten minutes later I was inside, and it was raining hard outside. And that was undoubtedly the end of the Martyrs’ Moment until next year. I’m sorry it didn’t end better. But then again, it was also raining on the Costa cruise which at that point wasn’t even out of sight of land.

Speaking of martyrs and resistance and all, we were walking across the central piazza in Mestre this morning, the Piazza Erminio Ferretto. I casually asked Lino who Ferretto was, and he said, “He was a partisan in the Second World War. He was my sister-in-law’s brother.”

Excuse me? Yes, his oldest brother had married a girl from Gazzera, a town outside Mestre, by the name of Elvira Ferretto. Her brother was a full-bore freedom fighter who had spent part of the Thirties also fighting against Franco in Spain. He and his companions got caught by a Fascist patrol one night — they were hiding in a manger and got jabbed by the pitchforks the soldiers punched into the hay, testing to see if there was anybody under there.

I wonder if it’s good to dwell on these things or not. I’m thinking maybe not.