Venetian-ness | Venice: I am not making this up

we all need more fiber

August 1, 2025 7 Comments

Fiber optic cable is no newcomer to Venice — we’ve had it at home for years now. But clearly our neighborhood is on track for extreme upgrading to intergalactic ultra-fast ultra-wide broadband. Venice might give the impression (briefly, from afar, with your eyes half-closed) of a city left adrift in the backwash of the Renaissance. Yet men have been hard at work these past few days making Venice ever more modern. And I say thanks, but Venice has always been modern.

Behold the mighty Root Cable 185 from Tratos. The company’s website says that it has been “specifically designed for network and telecommunications uses, and is characterized by a high transmission velocity and low attenuation, making it ideal for long-distance connections and broadband applications.” Impressive, but simpler things also impress me, such as the chance (I missed) to watch the procedure of hoisting this monster onto the fondamenta. It does inspire new admiration for the skill and effort that numberless men dedicated to creating Venice (looking at you, Doge’s Palace, belltower of San Marco, etc.). No motors, hydraulic power, and so on. Of course, the ancient Egyptians and Greeks and Romans didn’t have them either, and they also managed to build phenomenal things, so let’s get over ourselves.

All this work to install the means by which we can send our million daily messages and memes and photos to everybody we know. But what I really like right here is how much red is going on.

There’s a lot happening under all that stone. At this stage it looks like they’re operating on the city’s deviated septum.

Bridges don’t just carry you, they carry cables and wires and ducts. Keep an eye on that loose slab of stone.

This is a master-class in bridge-building and -repairing in Venice.

Back to the bridge of Sant’Anna. Those four open canal-side windows belong to a charming little apartment for tourists. I’m just wondering if the visitors talked about anything else than how their romantic Venetian vacation turned out. The jackhammers really went at it.

The romantic-apartment front door is on the right, just before the pile of mud. I mean the bridge.

Today progress in Venice takes so many forms, though by now they’re not what you might call surprising or original. But over the centuries Venice became rich and powerful in large part because it was alert to innovation of many different sorts.

On the social side, the Venetian government passed a law in 1258 requiring doctors, even the most illustrious, to treat poor patients for free. Shocking then, perhaps still somewhat startling. In 1443 the government guaranteed the services of a lawyer to poor defendants at no charge; the lawyer would be chosen by a judge from among the best lawyers in Venice (no fobbing the case off on your newest recruit) and was required to follow the case with maximum care or risk a large fine. That’s become normal, I think, in concept if not in practice. I don’t know about fines today, though.

On the commercial side, the Venetians established the Patent Statute on March 19, 1474, now considered the earliest codified patent system in the world. These patents were granted for “any new and ingenious device, not previously made,” provided it was useful.

However “useful” may have been defined, suddenly useful was everywhere: Between 1500 and 1600 Venice granted 593 patents. (In the same period the Kingdom of France granted 100.) By 1788, Venice had certified 1896 patents.

Speaking of useful, pharmacists were forbidden to sell their medicines without a doctor’s prescription. If this is normal now, credit goes to the old Venetians to whom quality control was an obsession. Maybe they loved quality for itself, but control ensured that their myriad products were not only good, but reliable, hence valuable. It was always all about money.

A zecchino minted between 1779 – 1789 for Paolo Renier, the next to last doge of Venice. (photo seen on eBay, coin for sale by Giamer Antiques and Collectibles)

No, they didn’t invent money. But the Venetian gold ducat, later called the zecchino, became arguably the closest thing to what you might call a monetary “gold standard” for 500 years. The coin maintained a consistent weight (approximately 24 carats) and high gold purity (99.7 percent) from 1284 to 1797. Venice’s strong trading network ensured the zecchino’s circulation throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, from the Netherlands to India. It is the only coin in the world that retained, for the over five centuries of its uninterrupted existence, the same images, the same epigraphs, the same weight and the same purity of the metal. I sometimes complain that in Venice money is king, but that’s freaking impressive.

Back to fiber optic cables. Ninety percent of Venice and its satellite towns and hamlets are served by FTTC connections, while 79 percent has FTTH and the by-now quaint but still serviceable ADSL covers 99 percent. If you’d like to know more, here’s Open Fiber.

So progress jackhammers on. The bridge has been left with scars from the intervention, because there are rectangles of cement where stone used to be and I cannot understand it. We have ultra-fast broadband, but we also still have people who just carry things off, things that aren’t even theirs. Doesn’t feel like progress to me.

Remember that stone slab that was moved aside to allow access to the innards of the bridge? It, and its companions, are obviously gone. I have no idea where, or for what reason. There was stone, now there is only cement. You might suppose that the supervisors decided it was prudent to make future access simpler/cheaper/faster/easier by not bothering with that pesky stone anymore. And yet….

And yet, the stones at the summit of the bridge were put back where they belonged. But the others?

The same fate befell the stones on the Sant’Anna side of the bridge. True, the steps are still uniformly grayish, so it’s not that they draw undue attention to themselves, and yes, the cement on these steps is smoother and looks less homemade than on the other side. That’s not the point, of course.

I started this post with glowing eyes looking toward the future, and I indulged myself by recalling a smattering of examples of Venetian greatness. But here we are today. You’ve got your interstellar communications cables, and you’ve got steps now made of concrete where a week ago there was stone.

It’s easy to see the seam between stone and concrete. Happily for everyone, you can also see that dogs don’t care. Or was that a lynx?

Venetian-ness

Marino Menegazzo: The last goldbeater

April 14, 2025 9 Comments

Gold on its way to being beaten into a leaf seemingly lighter than air. Believe it or not, this leaf is still closer to the beginning than to the eventual end. This is merely the first step; these leaves have just undergone their first pounding (20 minutes under the tilt hammer) and now will be cut into smaller pieces and beaten again.

Marino Menegazzo is beating gold leaves on a traditional block of marble, and is sitting because wielding an 8-kilo (17 pounds) iron hammer standing up would massacre his back. Turning gold into gossamer requires from 1200 to 1800 blows of the hammer.

For every “first,” there is a “last.” They come packaged together, kind of like up and down. Maybe you actually want your “up” to come down, so that makes you happy, but this particular “last” is serious. If you are seeking pleasant news today, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Sorry.

Slow-news-day stories from Venice occasionally bewail the shrinking population of the historic center (“real Venice” to me); the disappearing population of artisans, not so much. Venice’s fortunes were built not only on the cunning of merchants but the skills of the artisans who created whatever the people in the fancy houses wanted to sell. Now it’s 2025, and for an artisan to survive in Venice requires a fortitude and capacity for sacrifice that goes unnoticed by anybody except the tax collectors and landlords.

The result? The road to Going Out of Business sales. Two years ago, on April 20, 2023, Marta Artico wrote a report in La Nuova Venezia headlined: Venezia, in dieci anni hanno abbassato le saracinesche 4,000 artigiani. (“In ten years 4,000 artisans have closed up shop.” The statistics cover the metropolitan area, not just real Venice. But still.)

That’s bad enough, but what if an entire craft is slated to disappear? In the case of Marino Menegazzo, despite every effort, that is exactly what happened. Not in the distant past, but mere months ago.

Marino Menegazzo was the last man in Europe to beat gold leaf entirely by hand (I except the 20 minutes of the first beating by a 1926 tilt hammer, as similar hammers were in use centuries ago powered by water). And he didn’t beat only gold, but 17 various gold alloys.

Pure gold, leaf by leaf, seen as it is alloyed down to “white gold” — gold plus silver — in the center.

So now the skill, sensitivity and experience that he has perfected in his lifetime is gone, along with that of the centuries and generations of goldbeaters that preceded him.

Before I proceed, I urge you to read the article I wrote about him that is linked above. His story up to a few years ago is all there, so no need to repeat it all here.

The sign above his workshop/office/shop. (*Battiloro* means goldbeater.)

The “Mario Berta Battiloro” company was founded in 1926, and Marino had hoped to bring the family enterprise to its 100th anniversary. But no. The up has had to submit to its down. At its height (I refrain from referring to it as the “golden age”) the business had 14 workers producing 1,000 booklets of 10 to 25 gold leaves each every month and, in exceptional cases, even in a week. Impressive? In the 18th century there were some 340 goldbeating workshops in Venice.

Now Marino’s tools are silent, awaiting transfer to the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, and a craft/skill/art that made Venice shine like the sun will no longer be part of the city’s greatness.

His hammers (l to r) weigh 6, 3, 4, 8 kilos (13, 6, 8, 17 pounds). Pick up something that weighs 17 pounds and imagine doing anything with it besides putting it down immediately. And carefully.

Many, even most, artisans have to grapple with the most basic challenges to their survival, from rent increases to shrinking markets, taxes, the cost of materials, and the occasional debt, a struggle that too often has led to the same mundane conclusion. But the craft of goldbeating deserves more than a “Hey, whatcha gonna do?” Gold leaf continues to be produced in many places around the world, but not like this. Not even close.

These are the leftovers. Bits of gold leaf that are sliced away from the edges of the perfectly-cut leaves are piled together, waiting their turn to be melted down and pounded again.

Marino Menegazzo managed to weather the effects of the pandemic, which blocked his customers for too long, and not all of them returned. But the failure to find an apprentice — there were some, but one by one they moved on — was followed by being compelled to sell his laboratory to pay debts, some reaching back to crises in 2007. (He kept ten workers on until 2015 because “they were part of the family”).

The gold is smelted at approximately 1750 C (3182 F). After smelting, the pure gold is poured into a form to cool as an ingot.

This gold has no idea what’s waiting for it.

The ingot rolled through the laminator sets out on the long road to gold leaf.

Each pass through the laminator results in a longer and thinner strip, the first phase of becoming a leaf.

He takes the long ribbon of gold and cuts off whatever size piece is destined for goldleafdom.

The rest he folds up and puts in the safe till he needs another piece.

Losing the laboratory was the fatal step. He could certainly have kept going for at least a few more years if he’d been able to find a new one. Sound simple? Not in Venice. Because he works with flame, and has a few other technical requirements, he couldn’t move into just any old empty decrepit storeroom, and the search for an adequate new space was completely fruitless.

Appeals for assistance made to the city and the regional governments, and even to the diocese of Venice, were met either with silence or the kind of offers that are no better than none. Requests for meetings were ignored. A few foreigners seemed interested in coming to the rescue, but time was running out and there were no results. An artisan who in some other countries would be sustained as a Living National Treasure was left to his own devices. He wasn’t asking for favors, just a space! The Arsenal? Nope. A corner of the old ACTV yards at Sant’ Elena? Nope again.

So there you have it. There will be no more golden ribbons curling out of the laminator, no more leaves of gold patiently pounded to literal transparency. There will be no one who is capable of sensing the gold’s response to the winter fog or the summer drought and the heat and the pressure of his hammers.

Another piece of Venice falls away.

One gram of pure gold, circled in red. (One gram = 0,035274 of an ounce.)

One gram of gold beaten into 49 filmy-fine leaves.

He is working with the heaviest hammer here. He must adjust the force and the rhythm to avoid overheating the gold. The two packets, or “cutches,” of mylar sheets are held steady by the green “shoder,” made of parchment.

Here he’s working with the lightest hammer. You may think you could handle the hammer, but could you keep track of perfectly counting every strike of it? Because that is crucial, and studies show that the capacity to concentrate is deteriorating under the effects of smartphones and the internet. Goldbeating resembles some form of meditation, with weightlifting added. Is that a thing?

Menegazzo periodically checks the thinness (and the evenness) of the leaf. The nature of the light passing through it reveals how thin it is, or what more he needs to do. He can beat leaves so thin that he can obtain a thousand pieces from just 20 grams of gold. (Photo from his book on the workshop, I regret the quality here.)

After the first beating the leaves are cut into four pieces and interleaved again between sheets of mylar for the final beating. As you see, each leaf must line up exactly with the one before. I probably didn’t need to point that out. Notice the square lined notepaper nearby — it’s there to check alignments when needed. Again I state the obvious.

The final leaves have to be cut to the prescribed dimensions (there are many options). That’s where his wife and twin daughters, and an occasional helper, came in.

Eleonora Menegazzo assembling a “libretto,” or booklet, of the gold leaves as ordered. Like goldbeating, this also has a contemplative aspect, work aided by various tools including her perfect fingernails.

The adjustable cutting tool is called a “wagon.” I suppose I can see that, though it seems like one of those spontaneous “That’s what we’ll call it till we come up with something better” ideas.

Sabrina Berta, Marino’s wife and the guiding spirit of the workroom, was born into her family’s life of goldbeating. The workshop has barely changed over the decades.

The slatted floor simplifies the occasional clean-up operation to recover all the random bits of gold that have fallen by the way. Nothing escapes.

The angel Gabriel atop the belltower of San Marco gleams with Menegazzo’s gold.

Venetian-ness

the merry month of spring

April 7, 2025 24 Comments

A friend mentioned in a friendly way that it might be nice for me to lighten up (she didn’t put it that way, but that’s what I heard) and share some glances at Venice these days. Nothing easier.

In the search for diversion you can never go wrong with laundry. Here we have black clothes and white, and their children in the middle.

That was the day reserved for all the pink clothes. Or one red item that ran.

I can’t imagine that they have anything to talk about. They might have tried, once.

Inside and outside are such bourgeois concepts. They manage to mingle rather well.

I stopped for the reflection but stayed for everything the heck else. The palm frond is typically an appurtenance of ultra-pious Catholic groups. The nearby surveillance camera does hint at a belt-and-suspenders approach to security, though. The clips on the wall once anchored now-removed shutters. The significance of the flower in the pot eludes me. I am in love with the drainpipes.

I hesitate to deconstruct this moment’s delicate equipoise. But I think this father is happiest in the service of his daughter, the empress, so at ease with power that she doesn’t need to even look at her faithful servitor. No sarcasm here, I mean it. They’re both exactly where they want to be, and how often can that ever be said.

I loathe my cellphone’s camera, for obvious reasons, but it was my only way to grab this extraordinary conjunction of hair before they all got off the vaporetto. They seemed not even to know each other, but most likely they were all going to the nearby high school. Perhaps these tresses are required of some adolescent cult. I’ll never know.

I was there, and yet I still can’t explain why they all had open umbrellas. Yes, it had rained, but the street reveals that the danger was long past. They Just Were.

The city can’t win. It puts out a trash bin AND an ashtray. But these passersby did not believe in using either. Their disdain almost seems to express some message. Yes, we understand what you want, but we will defend to the death our right to not dispose of them as you require.

This tombstone carver is somebody I’d like to know. Or maybe he’s one of those people whose wit doesn’t come through except on paper. Or marble. Here he has substituted the standard “Mario Rossi” with the name of the “Universal Genius.” The sentiment is more modern: “We will always love you, your dear ones.” The dates are funny, though.

And here we’re laying this script and design on the shoulders of the divine Dante. I doubt that any classical scholar ever wondered what the tombstone would have looked like as the Supreme Poet wandered the underworld. But here at least the dates are correct.

Okay, if this were music it would be trills, arpeggios, scales, and the occasional mordent. I have no idea what the two geniuses mentioned on the marble would think about how their names are being treated, but I’m pretty sure a bereaved spouse or parent would fall apart in the face of all these possibilities. Butterflies for Michelangelo would be an audacious option, don’t rule it out too soon. (If anyone is interested, “N” stands for “nato/a,” or born; “M” is for morto/a, the opposite of born.)

The view from the belltower of San Giorgio never disappoints, especially if you appreciate this vision of Giorgio himself in his “bring it” pose, waiting for his dragon. If I were a dragon I’d have been far away, reviewing my life choices.

Venetian-ness

Christmas in Venice — the letter-carrier cometh

December 19, 2024 9 Comments

I don’t know whether they calculate according to volume or weight. Either way, to borrow a phrase, they’re gonna need a bigger boat. I mean cart.

Of course you have thousands of things to do in preparing for the upcoming holidays, and they will be tiring and inconvenient (I’m guessing). But your day is going to have trouble squeezing more than average sympathy from me because I this morning I got a glimpse of the letter-carrier’s day.

Do the words “weighty, awkward, cumbersome” added to ” a couple of awful bridges” bring Christmas cheer to your spirit? Not mine. This vehicle wonderfully shows the determination of the Italian postal system and its foot soldiers to get the serum to Nome. Sorry, I mean the mail — or your Amazon orders — to you. It reminds me of those fabulous motorbikes, the ones that buzz around Naples loaded with entire families, their sports gear (surfboards, lacrosse racquets, five-person tents), domestic animals, the Supreme Court, the 66th Armor Regiment, and so forth, as if it were nothing.

I used to admire the trash collectors, and I still do. But the letter-carriers have taken the game up to the Expert level.

One might categorize this construction as either a work of art or engineering. There could be anything here. Ernest Hemingway’s lost suitcase of short stories, or the solution to the Zodiac Code, or the Seven Cities of Cibola. Who would know? The letter-carrier was at the far end of the calle slipping an envelope into a letterbox. All I can say is that he must have a brain that goes into extra dimensions, because his route must be designed to a diabolical degree. Imagine arriving at an address and discovering that the item you need is on the very bottom underneath everything.

It occurs to me that his trolley has evolved in somewhat the same way of the average newsstand here. There are certainly some newspapers wedged into this pandemonium of paper, but as you see, the owner’s survival clearly no longer depends on the sale of newspapers.

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