Let’s return to the subject of the public water supply. Even with thousands of rain-collecting wells in the city, Venice needed more water. (Bear in mind that in the 1600’s Venice had some 200,000 inhabitants). And they were thirsty, needed to wash their clothes, needed to dye their wool and silk, and so on.
I do not know how many artesian wells have ever been drilled here, so please do not ask me. But they were precious, obviously, especially when there was a drought. Or when bombs began to fall in the 20th century, threatening the aqueduct.
This trusty artesian well is in the Campo dei Ognissanti in Dorsoduro. Like many fountains here it lacks any sort of basin, no matter how small, for animals to drink from. I do not understand this.A restoration a few years ago added the official inscription…“Prof.ta M 209.75 ” means “Profondita’ (profundity, depth) 209.75 meters,” or 688.15 feet.This artesian well in Campo San Basso, otherwise known as the Piazzetta dei Leoncini, has been bubbling up for centuries. It is said to be the deepest in the city. I know no more, but if it’s deeper than the one at Ognissanti it deserves more respect than it ever gets.There are always pigeons splashing around here, it must be something like a spa for them.The upwelling water is easy to discern here. Curiously, while this pool must be a godsend to the pigeons and passing dogs, there is absolutely no provision here for supplying water to parched passersby. It’s the opposite of the fountain at the Ognissanti (and elsewhere). What is so hard about the notion of supplying water to everybody/thing?Do you see a well in Campazzo San Sebastiano? Look closer.This metal cap covers the pipe which once carried the artesian water, and presumably could still carry it. This is near Lino’s childhood neighborhood, and he walked by here on the way to elementary school every day. He remembers that this well was open during the Second World War, with a big tank set up to collect the water. Considering the bombs falling on Mestre (crucial railway node and near the industrial zone), the risk of losing water from the aqueduct was not to be taken lightly. I think it would be an excellent idea to open this again. There are plenty of dehydrated people who pass by here every day.This is a very rough sketch of the water-tank-and-faucets set up on the artesian well in Campazzo San Sebastiano. As Lino recalls it, the tank was sitting on sawhorses, or some supporting structure (not shown). The tank was filled by means of a tube attached to the fountain, and the water from the tank filled two long, closed metal tubes extending from both sides. Faucets were punched into these tubes. There was an overflow trough below the faucets, and an overflow tube from the top of the tank emptied the excess water into the trough. The excess water flowed away toward one of the still-open “gatoli,” or drains, that once conveyed rainwater to a subterranean cistern, as written about in my earlier post. Women brought their cooking pots, buckets, whatever container was called for, and filled up.One is strangely tempted to bring a set of strong pliers…One is strangely not tempted to be arrested and hauled away.Campo Sant’Agnese has a real, if decommissioned, well (background), and the scar of something (foreground) that looks very like a well. Perhaps this was one of those described by Tassini (translated by me): “In the 1500’s a well was drilled of the type called artesian. Marin Sanuto writes that ‘on July 8, 1533 there came to the Colegio sier Vincenzo Zorzi, sier Polo Loredan, sier Almoro’ Morexini Proveditori de Comun saying that following the orders of the Serenissimo and the most illustrious Signoria, they went to see the well in the district of Sant’ Agnese…'” He goes on to say that the engineers had dug to a depth of 16 “passi,” and had found fresh water. (A Venetian “passo” was equivalent to 1.738 meters, or 5.7 feet. Therefore they hit the water table at 91.2 feet down.) There’s more.Campo Sant’ Agnese on a tranquil summer day. It wasn’t so tranquil on an unspecified day in 1866 when a crew was digging a well in a little garden attached to a brewery here and they hit water. Tassini: “A column of mud and sand, freed by the water and gas from the turbid strata pierced by the drill, hurled itself 40 meters (131 feet) in the air, deluging this material on the church as well as the nearby buildings and damaging them because of the collapse of the underlying terrain.” No report on the effect on the beer.
Most of the fountains that we see today around the city running day and night are supplied by the city aqueduct. My next post will reveal the dazzling engineering of the historic — pre-20th century — Venetian aqueduct, but at the moment I want to acknowledge the burbling municipal H2O that has revived countless tourists.
As here. Filling up your own bottle is an excellent way to avoid paying the exorbitant prices for bottled water.Thirsty dogs just have to figure out how to drink from a falling jet of water. It’s not that hard, but if I had a dog I’d definitely carry around a collapsible bowl. I mean, come on.But certainly we’re all grateful for the running water. At least when the water IS running.There is a number of fountains that are permanently dry, turned off, extinguished, whatever the correct term is. If you’re thirsty, seeing a fountain with no water appears to be something between a mirage and a deliberate affront.However, there are some fountains, such as this one near SS. Giovanni and Paolo, that flow more or less briskly during the summer. The reason for closing some fountains between December and March is precisely to save water, seeing that the need for water isn’t as urgent when it’s freezing cold and there are relatively few tourists around, and those that are around aren’t perishing of thirst.Then there are fountains which have been closed summer and winter. This was running just fine till a few years ago, and even though I live nearby, and could easily run home for a drink, you have no idea how often on a sweltering summer day I would gladly avail myself of some water. But no. It must be part of the group of 70 fountains which have been closed because they weren’t in high-traffic tourist areas (a statistic dating from 2008). Since then, enough of the city has become a high-traffic tourist area, especially when the sun is at its broilingest, to nullify that exception. Open the dang fountain already!The entire world seems to have given up on this fountain, just two steps from our house in an unimportant little courtyard. Until recently it was running (well, dripping) just fine, minding its own business. Then it was sealed, and now this.
Many people have asked me the obvious question: All that water running all the time, isn’t it a tremendous waste? Veritas, the water company, says that it isn’t. I suppose they would. I haven’t found a contrasting opinion to that, but I have had to suspend more research because life is short.
The logical solution, as people occasionally suggest, is to install faucets so that only the water that’s needed at the moment comes pouring out. Simple? Of course not!
An Italian member of an online political forum, who goes by the name “gava,” wrote (translation by me): “My project to install faucets to eliminate waste of precious drinkable water from the fountains is not easy to realize.
“In Venice there are about 200 fountains which consume about 800 cubic meters of water a day (800,000 liters, or 211,337 US gallons). A considerable amount, there’s no doubt. But let’s think for a moment, the water comes directly from the spring at Scorze’, it has no costs for pumping or purification, they only add some chlorine.
“Furthermore, the installation of a switch would increase the bacterial load in the first stretch of pipe, and the controls made by ASL (the local health department) demonstrate this. Practically speaking, to install faucets would give a tiny economic advantage and many disadvantages, from the maintenance of the pushbuttons (of the faucet) which are subject to frequent breaks, to the presence of bacteria in the first tract of water. (I think he means where the water exits from the faucet, which when the faucet is closed would promote buildup of bacteria.)
“Over the past five years, I’ve seen a maximum of 30 functioning fountains in Venice (note: VeniceWiki has made a map but a quick check shows it is incomplete). Those that have been closed for years may have something more than simple bacteria in the pipes, up to real encrustation. In any case, I still think that the system of filtering and taps could be improved, I don’t want it to be an excuse for throwing water away.”
An unnamed ex-member of this forum replied: “I remember that some time back they started to install pushbuttons but the main problem was that they break really easily, and so a good number of fountains were put back to the old system.”
To complicate matters, Veritas is responsible only for the fountains in the public parks; the others are maintained by “other organs,” which I have not identified. But the fact that all the fountains aren’t managed by the same company means that of course there will be administrative and/or bureaucratic problems involved in any change.
So while we’re all waiting for simplicity and conservation to reign on earth, I suggest you drink the fountain water as much as you can. After all, it’s there for you.
The country has been lashed for a week by a meteorological monster originating in Siberia, and anybody who had to brave the sub-zero temperatures and 30 mph winds didn’t need to be told that it hadn’t wafted in from the Seychelles. Up until yesterday there was snow, it seemed, everywhere but here.
Then finally here it was. I love it, but of course I don’t have to drive in it, or take a train (many were blocked), or do anything other than wrap myself up like Boris Karloff as The Mummy and get out and look at it.
The hardy men — Massimo and Luca — who sell fruit and vegetables from this boat every morning but Sunday had to give in to three days of forced vacation. You think they were enjoying themselves? They told me this morning they’d been worrying about the produce in the storeroom, Maybe they should have bought a few smudgepots, like the citrus growers in Florida.
The next day (today), it was melting. I hate that part because it’s ugly and because who knows how long it will be before it snows again? So arrivederci, snow. At least you’re not turning to ice.
Slush, basically, the stage that happens everywhere. But here we have to take the dreaded Istrian stone into account, which apart from being beautiful and perfectly suited to life in Venice (resistance to compression, freezing and thawing, and salt, primarily), is one of the most slippery substances on earth when wet. Don’t lick the pump handle when the temperature is below freezing, and do not step on Istrian stone when it’s wet. You will not be vertical for long.While everybody else was thinking about problems caused by the snow, not many spared a thought for the birds. They were living the high life drinking all the snowmelt they could hold. Every little depression in the pavement of the fondamenta in front of the Naval Museum was a veritable trough for the Common Seagulls (Larus ridibundus). Sipping delicately, occasionally biting a little snow, these enchanting little birds are wearing their “wedding garb,” signified by the black feathers on their heads which appear in March.
And while I was enjoying this little festa, I spared a thought for the pigeons yesterday when this water was frozen solid. There had been a few of them dejectedly pecking away at the ice, trying to get at least a few drops out of what they clearly recognized as a shallow puddle which had turned against them. I’m not sure how long they kept at it, it was too cold and windy to stand there watching to see how much time and effort they were going to dedicate to the effort before quitting and going home. Maybe they succumbed to the thirst — there wasn’t one pigeon in the scrum today. But this little interlude made me feel happy. These birds were practically singing “Gaudeamus igitur” as they slurped away at what must have seemed something like a granita, a frozen liquid with a delicate aftertaste of sanidine feldspar.
No deep significance to this image — at least I don’t think there is. I do admire the anonymous person’s perseverance in training this branch. I don’t know if anybody in this branch’s family ever behaved like this.
So there we were, standing around waiting for a friend on the Strada Nuova; you may know (or I will tell you now) that this street is almost always teeming with people surging toward San Marco from the train station and vice versa, with small tributaries feeding into the main flow. The crowds are usually quite a mix of locals and non.
I hadn’t paid any attention to a little old grey-haired man who had just walked past us; all I saw when Lino said “Oh look” was his back. He was chunky, sort of like a short Jackie Gleason, and walking at a slow but steady pace, his steps separated by less than the length of his foot. Not shuffling, exactly, but certainly not striding.
“He was a garbage man in my old neighborhood,” Lino reported, and was known far and wide as a collector-of-things-people-throw-out. “I gave him a Singer sewing machine once and he gave me a huge jug of wine.” Lino recognizes now that a few liters of cheap plonk were not exactly a fair trade for something which today might be worth a tiny fortune. And why did Lino have a sewing machine anyway?
It was booty from another of those famous enterprises undertaken by Lino’s brother-in-law, the angelic Sergio who never says no. One of Lino’s sisters worked in the office of a dentist; the dentist had a father who had worked all his life in the Arsenal. The father was moving and so Lino and Sergio were recruited to clear out all his stuff.
“So I got the Singer,” Lino went on, “and the old man also gave me a Venetian passo, and some crucibles for melting gold, and a little anvil, and some other things.” The passo was a treasure; it was folding metal measuring stick calibrated to the system of measurements used by the shipbuilders of the Venetian Republic. One Venetian passo corresponded to about five feet. The late Nedis Tramontin built 1000 gondolas using the Venetian passo, and when he died in 2005 it was buried with him, as he requested. Or at least that’s what they said at his funeral.
Of course Lino could see plenty of value in keeping the passo, but no point at all in keeping the Singer, so away it went. As, by now, had the retired garbage collector. That’s all there is to say about him?
“He was also the coach of the Italian national women’s volleyball team.”
Let’s start at the beginning. This is how the area between the campanile of San Marco and the canal to the west looked in 1500. We can see this due to Jacopo dei’ Barbari’s evident out-of-body experience, for which we are extremely grateful. Notice that there are buildings where the garden will be 300 years later, when Napoleon comes to improve things.
Aerial views of Venice reveal an unsuspected abundance of gardens and parks, which aren’t always apparent to the wanderer of the brick- and stone-walled streets. But one garden cum park is so obvious that I wonder how many people are even aware of it. Those who are, though, have long been disappointed, and like so many things that ought to be done but somehow aren’t, the Giardini Reali stretching between the Piazza San Marco and the lagoon have spent years in quiet, despairing decline.
Once or twice a year, an article would appear in the Gazzettino urging the campers and backpackers and picnickers who bivouac in the Piazza to avail themselves of the green space — with benches, even! — where they could munch and relax. But either the message didn’t get across, or many people looked through the rusty gate at the dusty, gravelly area which once was a garden and now had more of the atmosphere of an abandoned parking lot in Buffalo and had second thoughts. Dust in the summer you can sort of put up with, but a mid-day garden which affords NO SHADE is very hard to make appealing.
In any case, tell the truth: Did you have any idea there was a garden there?
This is the area as it was seen at some unspecified date, but some time in the early 20th century. It’s a fairly large stretch of land to be used just for a batch of trees, but Napoleon did the same thing at the Giardini Pubblici.(Photo by Cynthia Prefontaine for Venice Gardens Foundation.)
But I’m here with good news: The garden is coming back, with flowers and a fountain and SHADE. At least those are the glad tidings announced at a press conference last Friday by the Venice Gardens Foundation (which is new — you haven’t somehow missed it, but its website will compel you to brush up on your Italian), an ambitious undertaking launched with lavish funding from the Generali Insurance Company.
The “Royal Gardens” (your first hint that they do not date from the days of the non-royal doges) were created by the wish of Napoleon in 1806 according to a design by Giovanni Antonio Antolini. When he wasn’t razing and demolishing swathes of Venice, Napoleon was transforming them. No sooner had he turned the Procuratie Nuove into the Royal Palace than he commissioned an adjoining garden, because as we all know, a palace must have a garden. Just look at Versailles. Napoleon may have been all about egalite’, but only up to a point.
The original design for the garden by Giovanni Antonio Antolini, spread out so geometrically between the Procuratie Nuove — sorry, Royal Palace — and the bacino of San Marco. The march of time and neglect have reduced this glistening perfection to a mishmash of feral botanical survivors.
So a garden was decreed and so it was, and so it continued under the Austrian occupiers and on into the epoch of the Republic of Italy, when I suppose the nervous sensation that no ghe xe schei to maintain it began to be felt.
Now we’re here and the garden will bloom again, in the form of a return to the classic design (with a few modifications) by Paolo Pejrone, one of the most celebrated landscape architects in Italy, if not the world. Meanwhile, architect Alberto Tosello will restore and re-pristinate, as the fabulous Italian verb comes out, the suffering buildings of the Padiglione Santi (another architect, not a batch of saints) — a small classic temple often identified as Palazzina Selva — the hothouse, and the sadly decrepit pergola. And the disconsolate rusty gates. Not to mention the long since seized-up old metal drawbridge.
Here is how Paolo Pejrone describes how his work will look (translated by me): “…one can imagine a garden of abundance and coolness, rich and luxurious…On the whole it won’t be a flower garden, except for the wisteria and trumpet vines, the agapanthus, some clerodendrum and hydrangeas; all suffused with a light spirit, with colorful and sometimes perfumed intervals in an elaborate and yet simple garden of leaves… It will be a triumph of leafy green, a play of transparency and shadows: every kind of leaf, thin and ribbon-like, supple and broad, glossy, leathery, or fluffy and opaque. The Gardens will proudly overbrim in every moment of the year…” It sounds divine, especially the part about the SHADOWS. It practically sounds like a stretch of the Amazon lowlands.
All this should be ready for the pleasure of everybody in the second half of 2018. Perhaps just in time for the first snowfall, but no matter. It will be beautiful again, that’s the point. And if tourists keep deciding anyway to fire up their camp stoves to cook lunch in the Piazza San Marco (not made up), or sprawl across the steps near the Caffe Florian to gnaw their sandwiches instead of reposing briefly in what should be a delectable little nook of leafy green, it certainly won’t be anybody’s fault but their own.
If you’ve ever run the gauntlet between the Molo and the vaporetto stop at “Vallaresso,” you will recognize this battlement of kiosks. But yes, there is a garden-like space open just behind them.Even if the gate is open, I can’t say I’ve ever felt an urge to go in. Perhaps it’s because I feared that it might lead to Miss Havisham’s ruined mansion.Needs no comment from me, except to say that one might be forgiven for passing up the chance to go in.If gravel is your game, you’ve come to the right place. But tell me if you can find a bench sheltered by anything but the sky.However, one could make a case for more benches.I realize that most of the public attention and concern for Venice is dedicated to churches and palaces and paintings, but a space that is part of a World Heritage Site had become a landscaped cry for help.The pergola, which ought to be draped with wisteria and not tarpaulins and “CLOSED” “DANGER” “ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN” signs. This is what “We have no money” looks like.On the left of the canal is the frozen-in-time-and-rust iron drawbridge, which served to connect the Royal Palace to the gardens for the convenience and delectation of the royals. It will be put back into working order, and anyone in what is now part of the Correr Museum will be able to wander over to the garden without having to go all the way around the Piazza. At least that’s the plan.Sigh.But landscape architect Paolo Pejrone has come to save the day, here explaining to the press how the garden will be laid out. When it’s all finished, I think they should install a statue of him, perhaps in this pose.This is the new design, somewhat related to the old, with all the plants and trees indicated by myriad colors to which I do not have the key. But if anyone wants to know where the hydrangeas are going to be, I’ll try to find out. Even if you don’t care about hydrangeas, there will be grace and loveliness. And shade.
