Venice: I am not making this up

Drink up: The aqueduct today

June 23, 2018 No Comments

You can thank thousands of people for this, starting with the victims of cholera whose fate made it clear that it was time for Venice to get a real water supply.

To pick up the story more or less where we left off, Venice continued to hydrate itself with water ferried across the lagoon in boats — plus the occasional well — until 1884, when the aqueduct was finally constructed that is bringing you water even as you read this.

I’m not a connoisseur of aqueducts, though I grasp the most basic outlines of the enterprise. But when I went to the Museum of the Aqueduct (not made up) near Piazzale Roma I was amazed, impressed, and totally gobsmacked by the amount of freaking knowledge one has to have in order to construct a public water supply, knowledge that’s expressed in formulas that look like angry porcupines with square roots instead of quills.

That little doorway in the corner next to the church of Sant’ Andrea de la Zirada is the entrance to the water-supply complex. No photos allowed in the grounds, which is too bad because they have two charming fountains I’d love to have shown you.

The entrance to the complex — the museum is in a building inside the walls. “Sportelli” are the desks where staff help you resolve your problems with bills, service, or anything in between. Only open in the morning from Monday to Friday, 8:30 – 12:30. No charge for the museum. However, everything is written in Italian. Though you do get to hear the soothing hum of the pumps at work.

Here is the network of pipes in Venice today (I regret the uneven background color; the lighting in the museum was just that way):

The system now serves the historic center, Giudecca, Murano, Lido, Pellestrina, Vignole, Sant’ Erasmo and the “minor islands” of the lagoon. The Veritas laboratory conducts 800 analyses per day on 17,000 samples.

In case you think you’ve never seen the aqueduct, water pipes are easy to detect on a summer morning.

Also to be detected under bridges, because that’s how the pipes get across the canals.

And the opposite is dependably visible in the winter.

This rendering shows the position of the pipe along the original Ponte degli Scalzi (1854).

According to VERITAS (Venezia Energia Risorse Idriche Territorio Ambiente Servizi), the latest edition of the water-and-trash-collection entity, the water system of the 44-town province of Venice is respectably vast. Let me say that statistics quoted by Veritas tend to vary according to assorted parameters, so I’ve taken the more modest numbers available in an effort to keep as close to the facts for the historic center as I can.

The distribution network of the aqueduct is more than 1,150 km (714 miles), 300 km (186 miles) of which are in the historic center. These pipes provide the Comune of Venice (261,321 inhabitants, including Mestre) with more than 45 million cubic meters of water a year, or 11,887,742,356.116679 gallons. Eighty-six per cent of this ocean of H2O is groundwater drawn from 49 wells (another source says 60 wells) between Venice, Padua and Treviso, and a small part from the Sile river which is made potable at Ca’ Solaro (Favaro). But it was a long, arduous, and costly path that brought us to this shining moment.

At the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, the population was about 150,000; the following two decades saw an intense depopulation at an average rate of 21 per cent per year. By 1820 there were only 100,000 people in Venice; after the cholera epidemic of 1838 only 93,500 inhabitants. Then began a gradual recovery and by 1857 the population was 120,414.

It was long since obvious that the hygienic/sanitary situation of the city had become extremely precarious. Water was still being brought from the mainland, but it wasn’t sufficient, and the once-glorious wells had been left to die. Veritas explains this by saying that the wells were at risk of infiltration of salt water via acqua alta and the necessary maintenance was difficult and expensive. I take that to mean “Nobody wanted to bother,” because the Venetian Republic didn’t seem to have any trouble maintaining them.

In any case, the situation was becoming dire. A survey commissioned by the city government in 1873 revealed that of a total of 4,329 wells, 2,620 were “mediocre,” 340 “muddy,” and 461 were “fetid.” And lack of any sewage treatment system only made everything worse.

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL INTERLUDE #1

To appreciate the importance — even urgency — of building an aqueduct for Venice, some context is necessary. In the 19th century, Venice (and most cities in Italy) (and Europe) was a hotbed of infectious diseases. Sorry to ruin your images of glamour, but parts of Venice more closely resembled Dickensian London than the refulgent Serenissima.

Cholera, unknown in Europe before the 1800’s, began to work its way across the continent. Major epidemics struck Venice in 1835-36, 1848-49, 1855, 1873, interspersed with smallpox, measles, and typhoid, terrifying diseases that flourished in poverty-stricken, cramped, feculent cities and which were vaguely battled by bewildered doctors and exploitative folk healers. Descriptions of the streets and smells in the most degraded neighborhoods will not be transcribed here — you’re welcome — but a city having more than 100,000 inhabitants with a lugubrious water supply and no sewage disposal other than the nearest canal basically describes itself. Venice wasn’t alone; in most Italian cities of the 19th century, sufficient potable water and adequate sewers simply did not exist. “Deadly pathogens,” as one writer put it, “led a very public existence here.”

The cholera epidemic of 1836 killed 2,066 persons in Venice; in 1849 cholera carried away 3,839 victims. Unable to keep up with burials, the city simply stacked the cadavers in the stifling August heat in the area in front of the church of San Pietro in Castello.

The campo in front of the church of San Pietro in Castello is much happier during the annual festa in late June.

Naturally the desperate quarantines and fruitless cordons sanitaires that were imposed across Italy meant that commerce was strangled, and when the cholera relented, Venice was on its knees economically as well. After the epidemic of 1854-55, the price of every type of food in the city had doubled. The Swiss had collection boxes marked For the cholera victims among Venice’s poor installed in hotels in Ticino (a region in Switzerland neighboring Italy), a well-meaning gesture that infuriated the Italians.

These calamities led to predictable battles among the city’s politicians, while the distraught common people, having noticed the similarities between this new disease and poisoning, began to spread panicky rumors that the State was deliberately trying to kill them. In Calabria, according to a government minister writing later, “widespread rioting had broken out after the vast majority of cholera cases had occurred among the poor,
who … accused the rich of being directly responsible for the cholera outbreak. The government, it was believed, had dispersed poisoned powder in an attempt to kill off a sizeable portion of the region’s poor … Cholera riots were as widely feared as they were common.”

By the time cholera struck again in 1873, “build an aqueduct” was at the top of the municipal must-do list.

End of interlude.

In July, 1874, at the conclusion of the latest cholera epidemic, the city administrators put out a call for bids on an aqueduct. Six projects were submitted; the winning bid was from L.A. Ritterbandt and D. Croll Dalgairns of London. The plan was this: The water would come from the Brenta canal between Stra and Dolo (this sounds familiar); at Moranzani there would be filters, tanks and pumps (ditto); and a duct beneath the lagoon would ultimately reach Venice at the Maritime Station (Sant’ Andrea) where the water would fill a huge cistern. Here steam-powered pumps would send the water to private users, 111 public wells, and to boats assigned to supply the islands. The contract was signed on June 26, 1876 (two years after the call for bids…) but something must have gone askew because three years later there was still no sign of an aqueduct; a French company acquired the concession and the right to build it.

On March 15, 1880 the Minister of Public Works stipulated that the Veneta Society for Ventures and Public Construction (sub-contractor for the French company) must complete the work within three years. Cost: 1,100,000 gold French francs ($14,300,000 at current value) and 2,506,100 Italian lire (current value not found).

More pipe had to be laid in 1913-1915, according to the date on this photograph. But the scene couldn’t have changed much from the original aqueduct. Sections of pipes brought on wagons drawn by horses, loaded onto boats called peatas (here in the Canal Salso between the lagoon and Mestre), and then rowed to the work site.

1882: Laying Duct 800 across the lagoon. First, they had to build walls and pump out the lagoon water, then dig the trench — men with shovels — and so on from there. Thirty per cent of the original iron pipes are still in use.

I’d never reflected on the amount of lumber required for building an aqueduct.

This structure, called a cassera, is essentially horizontal scaffolding whose primary duty is to brace the walls against the pressure of the surrounding lagoon. It’s also very useful for walking from here to there.

And, as you see, the work proceeded to a happy conclusion.

On June 23, 1884, let there be water! Ten years after the big decision was made, a jet of water from a magnificent temporary fountain in the Piazza San Marco leapt skyward to mark the inauguration of the new public water supply. Abundant! Clean! Glittering! Expensive! Before long, they had to adjust the ratio between number of users and number of coins per cubic meter because people weren’t signing up as predicted.

That taken care of, before long yet more water was needed, so some springs on the mainland at Sant’ Ambrogio (near Trebaseleghe) were tapped and more kilometers of pipe were laid.

On March 7, 1898 the network reached Murano, where the first spurt was celebrated with lights, stands (food, undoubtedly), a charity raffle, and a regata.

On October 1, 1900 the network reached the Giudecca.

On August 5 1901 the network reached the Lido. This must have been more than welcome, considering that the first sea-bathing establishments had begun to appear in 1857. The luxurious Grand Hotel des Bains had opened in 1900; I have no idea how their guests had been supplied with water. Maybe they bathed in prosecco.

July 18 1911: The aqueduct suffered a rupture which left the city, the islands and the estuary without water for eight days (in summer, of course). The investigation concluded that a boat probably ran over it. To avoid future inconvenience, the city approved construction of two additional ducts from the mainland to Sant’ Andrea.

May, 1911: Cholera strikes again. As it happened, German author Thomas Mann was visiting Venice during this period, so cholera became a major element of “Death in Venice,” published in 1912. I’ve never thought about how a tourist board might judge the relative value of a novel featuring a particularly repellent local epidemic if written by a Nobel laureate. Must have been awkward.

It’s interesting to note that, among some other factors I’ll write about elsewhere, these epidemics contributed to the 19th-century Romantic vision of Venice as sad, melancholic, somber, doleful. I’ve always wondered where that idea came from — you can’t blame everything on the fog — but it stands to reason that the general atmosphere (I don’t mean the olfactory) in 19th-century Venice often was not the most jovial.

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL INTERLUDE #2

So, I hear you ask — fancy new aqueduct and there’s still cholera? Certainly; not everybody was immediately hooked up to the system. You not only had to pay for the water, but for the connection and the meter. Lots of families couldn’t afford it.

Second, running water from the faucets did not automatically mean plumbing and flush toilets. Yes, drinking and washing with clean water is a huge step forward in public health, but most families continued with chamber pots or the occasional bucket and the nearest canal for quite a while. Naming no names, but someone I know extremely well reports that his family continued till at least the Fifties to use the chute in the kitchen (yes, in the kitchen) which went down into the canal. The opening was covered by a heavy stone which had a handle on it, which was convenient and mostly blocked out the odor.

I have now finally understood the deeper meaning of a common phrase everybody uses when they want to cut short a disagreement: “Metemo na piera sora.” “Let’s just put a stone on it.” I’d been imagining a tombstone, which connotes finality as well as anything else I can think of. But now the image of covering the toilet seems ever so much more powerful.

End of interlude. Also, end of story. I used to be fascinated by the lagoon, and still am, but I have to say that water pouring out of any faucet here has come to fill me with admiration and awe.

A very eccentric and overstuffed shop in Cannaregio has antique appurtenances of various types, including old faucets. Think of the pleasure each one of these brought, back then when people hadn’t quite begun to take running water for granted.

You can design faucets with every material and in every way your brain can contrive, but somehow now they don’t impress me anywhere as much as the fact that water comes out of them.

Venetian-ness

Feets don’t fail me now

June 11, 2018 4 Comments

I was in a friend’s apartment one evening not long ago, which gave me the chance to (A) stop and just look out the window at a snippet of Venice I’ve never seen from this angle and (B) observe a snippet of behavior so bizarre that it might well have qualified as performance art. More performance than art.

Water, gondolas, so far so normal. Photographer, photographer’s assistant (Uncle Fester, in the background), and model. Also tres normal. But wait…

Morticia’s feet are in the water. With her sandals on. The tourists in the gondola are completely oblivious. Maybe they think this is some quaint Venetian custom: The Bathing of the Sandals.

Feet cool and refreshed, but the sandals will never stroll again. Salt water is the end.

Tourism

Tourists take a load off

June 9, 2018 8 Comments

I realize that Venice can be fatiguing — most people aren’t used to walking all day. But the dog has twice as many feet as the man, and it’s still standing.

Sometimes people ask me when the “tourist season” or “high season” begins, and I used to be uncertain. Uncertain no more: It’s Easter. Easter is like the starting bell at Churchill Downs — they just start coming. I can’t explain it, but it has never failed; even if Easter were to fall on February 3, November 5, January 22 — that would be the start of tourist season. But that’s not what’s weighing on me.

What’s weighing on me is how so many of our honored guests have come to behave as if they were in their own backyard, or garage, or abandoned lot behind a shuttered White Tower Hamburgers. Extreme bad manners, of which we’ve already had a few starter episodes, get into the newspaper. For example, the drunken Swiss boys cavorting naked in Campo San Giacometto at the Rialto — profoundly repulsive but not DANGEROUS — or the drunken boys (unspecified nationality) who jumped off the Rialto Bridge one night — HUGELY dangerous.

Or the perhaps not even drunken young men who still were jumping off the bridge by the Danieli hotel in full daylight, blithely unconcerned about barges and taxis and gondolas below. The jumpers could easily be injured when hitting the water or, more precisely, hitting something that’s on the water (recall the drunken New Zealander a few hot summer night years ago who jumped off the Rialto and landed on a passing taxi; after six months of agony, he finally died). Anyone in a boat passing under a bridge has to start thinking they’re in some shooting gallery where, instead of bullets, there are bodies coming for them. The prospect of six months of inescapable and increasingly repellent tomfoolery makes me feel tired and dejected.

We know about these shenanigans because people make videos on their phones and post them on social media. That’s the bass line in this chaotic cantata — showing the imbecility by doing something equally imbecilic. Everyone who reads these reports wonders why people are making videos instead of calling the Carabinieri. If you know the answer to this, please step up to accept your award. Right after you call the Carabinieri. But witnesses to the Danieli escapade say that the police were indeed called, and the police indeed did not appear. So there’s that.

In any case, one doesn’t need dramatic episodes to feel repulsed by tourists, and the daily deterioration doesn’t merit much of a story in the paper. Any neighborhood is bound to offer all sorts of examples of boorish behavior. Among various options, my current obsession is the evidently irresistible urge so many people have to just sit anywhere, plop down on the pavement or bridge, when the mood strikes. I realize this is not unique to Venice, because I’ve seen young people sitting on the floor in the airport, as if there were no seats anywhere. I’m not saying we should bring back the corset and the high starched collar, but the other extreme is worse. Why? For one thing, because they’re in the way and public space is already measured in microns. Second, because it makes otherwise normal people, who almost certainly have had some upbringing, appear to want to revert to life as Homo habilis once they get to Venice.

“Consider yourself at home, consider yourself one of the family” is not a Venetian song.

Tourists waiting for the vaporetto at San Pietro di Castello. It must be terrible to have your strength give out before you can make it the last few steps onto the dock, where there are benches to sit on.

He may be many things, all of them wonderful, but he is not a child. Does he do this where he lives? Or is this some special feature of vacation in a foreign country where nobody knows you?

Maybe the force of gravity is just stronger in Venice, pulling people down against their will. (Gazzettino, uncredited photo)

Tired AND hungry? Just buy a box of take-out pasta (the newest trend) and picnic wherever the spirit moves you. The city is yours! Sit as near a corner as you can manage, so people can risk falling over you!

Takeout food is cheap and filling and maybe even tasty. But while the city is attempting to control the number of places which sell pizza by the slice, kebabs, and boxes of pasta, it has gone inexplicably silent on the question of where the food is to be taken away to. Evidently anywhere is fair game. Take-out places are going to be required to have bathrooms, but not a thought is spared for seating. Which means that in this case I have to sympathize with the feeders. If you give people no option, they’re going to fend for themselves. This is what self-fending looks like. (Gazzettino June 7, 2018 uncredited)

Or why not sit down by a sign that says “Please respect Venice”? Better than sitting on the pavement? Yes, sort of.

Speaking of benches, this one at the San Stae stop was inscribed in marker-pen to indicate the appropriate placement of people according to their category. All the descriptions were sharp and rude, and one was dedicated to tourists.

It says “Reserved for the tourists del cazzo.” This isn’t easy to translate; “cazzo” literally means “penis,” and is often used to modify a word to its trashiest, cheapest, lowest-grade level. Yes, writing this is also trashy and low-grade, but one recognizes the sentiment even against one’s will. The notion that Venetians hate tourists isn’t quite right: They hate anybody who acts like a slob, and many of those come from somewhere else.

So much for the subject of quality (lack of). In my next post, some observations on quantity (surplus of). There will be interesting statistics.

Uncategorized

Mini-Memorial Day

May 31, 2018 3 Comments

Memorial Day is now disappearing in the traffic behind us (though my calendar notes that yesterday, May 30, was the traditional date for the same), but what are dates? As a wise person once remarked, for Gold Star families every day is Memorial Day.

In any case, many nations commemorate their fallen with masses of marble, eternal flames, and other worthy symbols of pride and humility. Italy has the “Altare della Patria,” or Altar of the Fatherland, in Rome.

Imposing. Serious. Solemn. (Photograph by alvesgaspar, wikimedia).

And then there is a schlumpy little chunk of some kind of stone that was sitting in a tangle of green-and-brownery at Sant’ Elena. This last bit of Venice before the Adriatic Sea isn’t known for monuments, unlike the rest of the most-beautiful-city-in-the-world up the street. But in fact the whole neighborhood is a sort of memorial to World War I, its streets named for generals, battlefields, dates and exploits. And there is also this cube on which two words were long since incised: MILITE IGNOTO (MEE-lee-teh Ih-NYAW-to). Unknown soldier.

Lino came across this relic a few months ago, and was startled and more than a little offended. Not that he makes a cult of military cenotaphs, but he stated clearly that he saw no point in having such a significant object if it was just going to lie there, neglected and forgotten. He said this also to a few other people too, especially to some of the officers at the nearby Scuola Navale Militare Francesco Morosini, where he teaches Venetian rowing.

“Unprepossessing” is putting it mildly. Till you think about it, and then you realize that this fragment is the exact equal of the mountain of metamorphosed limestone in Rome.

Most comments float away like dandelion fluff (if you’re lucky), but Lino’s particular comment stuck somewhere because a cultural association devoted to World War I entitled the Associazione Cime e Trincee (Peaks and Trenches) got to work, and last Sunday the newly furbished memorial was rededicated in the sight of God and a small but trusty company of assorted veterans.

This ceremony wasn’t matched with any particular date — they could have waited till Saturday and combined emotions with the national holiday commemorating the founding of the Italian Republic. But they did it on Sunday, and we went. We felt mystically involved, even though we still haven’t found out how the notion of bringing the stone back to life, so to speak, ever occurred. It’s enough that it happened.

The Gathering of the Participants from various components of the armed forces with their standards. The participants outnumbered the spectators, but the fact that there WERE spectators is a fine thing.

When it comes to the bersaglieri (“marksmen,” or rapid light infantry) I’m not sure which is more dazzling — the fuchsia standard, or the cap cascading with turkey feathers. I’ll take both.

Last to arrive were three cadets from the naval school, bringing the Italian flag. They were accompanied by a very energetic ex-member of the Alpine Regiment who appeared to be acting as a sort of stage manager.

We move a few steps back to stand along the border of the circular plot where the stone is placed.

The two little girls pulled off the orange cloth to reveal the stone, which has now been placed up on a sort of pedestal and isn’t lying around in the dirt anymore.

Don Gianni Medeot, the chaplain of the naval school and a naval officer, blesses the stone.

Being blessed. The traditional laurel wreath has very untraditionally been laid — albeit reverently — on its side. The ribbons are supposed to be vertical. But let me not spoil the moment.

As soon as the modest speechifying concluded, a youngish member of the Alpine regiment (not pictured, and not the stage manager) walked right up and straightened the wreath. I felt so much better. The picture of the three cadets also looks better this way.

The standards were then packed up in their carrying cases, and the everyone proceeded to the refreshment phase — here as simple as the ceremony: red wine and potato chips.

You don’t need a marching band or fireworks.

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