Events

G20 coming to town

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This fabulous mass of clouds billowed up the other afternoon behind the Arsenal (just to set the general scene).  The Arsenal was considered the most secure place in the city for this event, a decision that wouldn’t have much surprised the Venetians of the long-ago Republic. In Venice’s greatest ship-building days the area was surveilled by boats patrolling the perimeter night and day, aided by men watching from 15 guard towers along the walls.  They didn’t put up the current signs — “Military Zone, Access Forbidden, Armed Surveillance” — but it was implied.

The G20 are coming for dinner.  And breakfast, and fancy fetes, and big meetings from July 7-11, and for days we’ve been given periodic updates on what this will entail for daily life.

For those who may not feel like knowing more than necessary, here are the basics (thank you, Wikipedia): The G20 is composed of most of the world’s largest economies, including both industrialized and developing nations. The group collectively accounts for around 90 percent of gross world product (GWP),[4] 75-80 percent of international trade,[A 1] two-thirds of the world’s population,[2] and roughly half the world’s land area. 

Think: Economic Ministers and governors of central banks.  Also think: Organized demonstrations protesting the many defects of the global economy, with protestors coming from far and also wide, at least some of whom are known to prefer violence.  Each group will be assigned a specific area from which to express their views.  They won’t be near the Arsenal, I think I can promise that.

This year it was Italy’s turn to play host, and considering that by the late 13th century Venice was the richest country in Europe, it seems pleasantly appropriate for the money masters to meet here.  I doubt that was the organizers’ motivation, but it does fit.  Although the decision was made in Rome, and not here, Venice may well have been seen as a city uniquely adapted to the control of movement by land or by water.

The city began planning all this last January (probably much earlier, actually), by means of at least ten separate committees.  The basic idea was to keep the city in as normal a condition as possible with the help of 1500 extra police (Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza, Polizia di Stato, etc.), including police divers ready for canal duty.  The prefect made a big point of saying he could have just shut the city completely down, but wanted to show it as open and even welcoming.  I hope that turns out to be true.

Some statistics: The eleven canals nearest the Arsenal were emptied of the boats that normally are moored there.  These 450 vessels were temporarily transferred to the marinas at the Certosa island (“Vento di Venezia”) and Sant’ Elena Marina.  I believe there is no cost for this to the owners, but there will certainly be some inconvenience in going to either place to get your boat.

This is what I call extreme house-cleaning — the rio de la Tana completely empty of the boats usually moored there.  I don’t know who owns the blue barge, but I bet it’s not going to be there two days from now.

The 62 delegations (size of each unknown) will be lodging in eight luxury hotels in the city.  The extra police that have been brought in as reinforcements will be bunking on the mainland, if that interests you.

Covid swabs every 48 hours are guaranteed to everyone at the meeting, at points in the Arsenal and in the delegation hotels.  Ambulances are on standby.

The yellow area is the “Security Zone,” accessible only to residents and shopowners who show their pass.  At “D” you find the taxi station between San Zaccaria and the Arsenal is suspended, and at E and F the fuel station and boatyard by the church of San Pietro di Castello are suspended, seeing that they are within a few feet of the second water entrance to the Arsenal.  No yachts will be permitted to tie up along the Riva degli Schiavoni.

This gate and others like it at any entrance to the Yellow Zone will be closed and overseen by someone in uniform who will check your credentials before letting you enter.  All the streets leading into the Arsenal area are now seriously gated. (Gazzettino)
The organizers are totally not joking about protecting the Arsenal area.  The caption refers to the gates “disciplining foot traffic,” a very polite way of basically saying “Keep Out.”
The Francescana rowing club is based inside the Arsenal in a large shed accessible by water and by land. The boats are now all inside the shed and the door locked tight, and the land entrance, as you see, will be blocked as of Sunday night by these supplemental hinged bars.

The vaporetto stops closest to the meeting site (Arsenale, Bacini and Celestia) will be suspended.  The Fondamente Nove are partially unavailable to traffic; one helpful notice explained to residents of the Lido that if they needed to go to the hospital, they would have to go to Murano, then proceed to the hospital by way of the Fondamente Nove stop.

Baffled by how this would work, I studied the vaporetto options and discovered Line #18 that runs from the Lido to the Murano stops, where you change for the 4.1.  As if normal life here weren’t already sufficiently inconvenient, this line operates once an hour from 9:18 AM to 7:50 PM, with a break between 12:18-4:50 PM.  I don’t know that I’d undertake the voyage except in case of direst need.

Navigation will be controlled according to this color-coded scheme, and that means everybody, up to and including you and your aging uncle who wants to take the motorboat out to go fishing.

The green areas are for normal usage at any time; they term it “pleasure” use. “Anyone boating outside Venice must use the green areas.  The yellow stretch is for pleasure boating only by residents and only in order to reach a green patch.  The rest of the Giudecca Canal (red, though they call it orange) is forbidden to pleasure boats, as is all the rest of the orange zone (Grand Canal from the Bacino of San Marco to the Accademia Bridge. and the Bacino of San Marco to the Canale delle Navi at the end of Sant’ Elena). Navigation of every type of boat, including taxis and barges, is forbidden from 8-10 AM and 4-6 PM; the only exceptions are vaporettos and Alilaguna boats.  The blue stretch (they call it purple, but never mind) is forbidden to everybody.  This is the Arsenal wall facing the lagoon, so it’s unquestionably a potential hot zone.  Work out your own alternatives.

Transport of merchandise will be forbidden between 8:00-10:00 AM and 4:00-6:00 PM.  (See the red-orange zone on the map.)  Restaurant owners have been advised to stock up early, in case there are any glitches.

Don’t imagine that you can somehow manage to cleverly do things your own way; there will be some 60 boats of the Guardia di Finanza out patrolling, as well as four helicopters.  I appreciate the prefect’s assurances that normal life will continue, but I’m starting to wonder how many people are just going to decide to take a long weekend and go to the mountains.

The irrepressible wits at Nevodi Pizzalab are offering three new specials in honor of this important event, as always written in Venetian: Mancava, Anca, and El G20.  “We were also missing the G20,” the broader translation being “All we needed, on top of everything else, was the G20.”

 

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Problems

Drink up (water main break)

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And you thought leaks just went drip drip drip. (Photo: La Nuova Venezia)

Saturday morning a week ago I turned on the kitchen tap and water came out as usual except that it was wobbling.  I soon learned that certain stretches of the city — Sant’ Elena, parts of Castello (us), and even parts of Cannaregio and San Marco — were suffering water pressure problems and the fresh water was down to trickles in some houses.

The water company was already on the case, having discovered that at about 8:00 PM on Friday evening, some sort of heavy transport boat had driven blithely over a slightly submerged water main 60 cm (23 inches) in diameter and ripped it open.  The tube is of steel, so I’d say that was quite a little navigation error.  And I say this disaster was created blithely because the tide was low and the tube was in an area clearly marked as being forbidden to navigation.  Conclusion: The rogue boat was taking a short cut (sorry) across an area that shouldn’t ever have been crossed, especially not at low tide.  So the water main was doomed.

Meanwhile, fresh water was surging to the surface of the lagoon on the north side of the Arsenal like a submerged geyser, at the rate of 52 gallons (200 liters) per second. By Sunday the tube had been repaired but 7,132,645 gallons (27 million liters) of fresh water had poured into the lagoon. It must have been a shock to the fish, who may well never have tasted (or breathed, or whatever they do) salt-free water.

The boat hasn’t yet been identified, except that traces of zinc on the steel victim left by the propeller and rudder make it fairly clear which sort of vessel was involved.  If the perpetrator is ever identified, he’s going to have to face accusations not only of breaking the traffic law, and damaging city property, and the environment (I assume), but, just as bad, of not reporting it, which I suppose amounts to leaving the scene of an accident.  Hitting and running is frowned on, even if the victim is a steel pipe.

Perhaps you can make out where the real channel is located (hint: it’s to the left of the pilings, which is why they’re there; the motorboat leaving a foamy wake clearly indicates where boats are supposed to go). The space between the wall and the pilings is totally off limits. Does it seem particularly hard to discern where the channel is? Only about a thousand boats per minute (made up) travel back and forth on it.
The space is rather tight between the wall and the cement pedestal with its two warning signs. Of course, they’re pointing outward, so if you had decided you needed to slink along up next to the wall, you wouldn’t have much indication that it was a bad idea. But why would you be slinking along the wall?  It seems like an inherently bad idea, considering that it is almost guaranteed that the boat wasn’t heading under the arch in the wall and into the Arsenal.  That’s because it’s a military zone and its dwellers don’t look kindly on civilian intruders.

Now that I’ve introduced the subject of water in Venice — I mean in it, not around it — I’ll be dedicating a few upcoming chapters to how Venice managed to survive for 1,000 years without a steel water main, not to mention faucets.  Yet fresh water there was, and the system for providing it was just as amazing as anything else the Venetians have ever done, from building the Doge’s Palace to the invention of italic type.

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History

Perusing Venice

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One of several reasons why there has been a lapse in my postings is that there is an atmosphere of lethargy in the city which translates into “not very much to write about.”

Of course there’s always plenty if one wants either to dig far enough, or continue blotting the spindrift from the waves of unsolved, or unsolvable, problems.  But since the city government collapsed in a heap last June, the many problems which continue to afflict the city are almost always reduced to “Money, lack of.”  And writing about Money, lack of is not only monotonous, but also pointless.  And depressing.

Of course, “no ghe xe schei” has been the convenient phrase inserted into every situation for years, even when there was money; it was an excuse which the city administrators could turn on and off at will, as if it were the radio.  Then we discovered that there really wasn’t any money anymore, because it had been given to most of the participants of the MOSE project. You know that sound when you’re sucking on a straw to get the last drops of your drink?  The silence I’m referring to is the sound of ever-longer pauses between the municipal mouth and the municipal funds.  Not many drops left, but if you stop sucking it means you’ve given up, and we can’t have that.

Apart from what it signified, I’ve enjoyed this somnolent January.  We’ve had beautiful weather, and very few tourists.  But now that Carnival is bearing down upon us (Jan. 31 – Feb. 17), that’s about to change.  Thirty days of tranquillity isn’t enough, but it’s all we get.

The tranquillity induced us to take a few uncharacteristic aimless strolls.  You know, like tourists do, and this confirmed what tourists know, which is how lovely it is to wander and what interesting discoveries you make in the process.

Here, in no particular order, is a small, confetti-like scattering of what I’ve seen recently.

Between a small, unremarkable side street, which leads to essentially nowhere, we came upon this remarkable neighborhood shrine stretching beneath a house....
On a small, unremarkable side street which leads to essentially nowhere, we came upon this very remarkable neighborhood sotoportego which local piety had turned into a shrine.  The inscription over the doorway explains everything…
It says:
It says: “Most holy Virgin Mary of Health, who repeatedly preserved immune from the dominating mortality the inhabitants of this Corte Nuova especially in the years 1630 – 36 – 1849 – 55 (NOTE: FIRST TWO DATES ARE PLAGUE, SECOND TWO DATES ARE CHOLERA) and from the bombs of the enemy airplanes 1917 – 18 Benevolently accept their grateful vows and the vows of all of this parish Deign to extend your protection which we trustingly implore on all your devout followers (word obscured by underbrush is “devoti”  — thanks to reader Albert Hickson who saw it before the bush began to grow).
Two impressive capitelli, or small altars, survive, but several large empty spaces hint that they might once also have supported more. Naturally even here we find the inevitable graffiti, which if it could be deciphered almost certainly would not be of a sacred, or grateful, nature.
Two impressive capitelli, or small altars, survive, but several large empty spaces hint that they might once also have supported more. Even here we find the inevitable graffiti, which if it could be deciphered almost certainly would not be of a sacred, or grateful, nature.
If you have ever walked along the Fondamenta dell'Osmarin between Campo San Provolo and the Ponte dei Greci, you may well have noticed this tablet. It represents San Lorenzo (St. Lawrence), for whom the nearby fondamenta, former church and current home for the elderly are named. How do I know this (other than having found the information in a book)? It's because -- according to the custom of depicting a saint with the instrument of his/her/their martyrdom -- here we clearly have a man holding a grate, and we all know that San Lorenzo was grilled to death like a steak on the barbie.
If you have ever walked along the Fondamenta dell’Osmarin between Campo San Provolo and the Ponte dei Greci, you may well have noticed this tablet. It represents San Lorenzo, for whom the nearby fondamenta, former church and current home for the elderly are named. How do I know this (other than having found the information in a book)? It’s because — according to the custom of depicting a saint with the instrument of his/her/their martyrdom — here we clearly have a man holding a grate, and we all know that San Lorenzo was grilled to death like a steak on the barbie.
For anyone curious about the chalice he is holding in his right hand (which looks oddly like a crescent, but it may be just the optical effect), legend maintains that he was able to spirit away the Holy Grail to Spain, and it is now venerated in the cathedral of Valencia.
For anyone curious about the chalice he is holding in his right hand (which looks oddly like a crescent, but it may be just the optical effect), legend maintains that he was able to spirit away the Holy Grail to Spain, and it is now venerated in the cathedral of Valencia.
There is a long brick wall fronting the canal of the Arsenale, which faces the wooden bridge at the Arsenal entrance. The imposing marble sculpture is one thing which you can admire, or not, as you choose. But the little bronze plaque beside it has been defeated by time and by being placed so high that you can't read it anyway. But I have persevered, and while it doesn't contain the secret to turning straw into gold, it's worth revealing what seemed so important at the time.
There is a longish brick wall fronting the canal of the Arsenal, which faces the wooden bridge at the Arsenal entrance. This imposing marble sculpture is one thing which you can easily admire, or not, as you choose. But the little bronze plaque to the viewer’s left has been defeated by time and by being placed so high that you can’t read it anyway. But I have persevered, and while it doesn’t contain the secret to turning straw into gold, it’s worth revealing what seemed so important at the time.
This is my translation: "On the VI centenary of the death of Dante Alighieri the Naval Commandant of Venice, Admiral G. Pepe, restored and beautified the entrance facade of the Arsenal. On that occasion the marble monument of the XVI century, placed here at the side, which after many transfers found itself incomplete and defaced on the crumbling wall of the old workshop was restored and completed and transferred to the public view. Venice September 1921. Of course a noble work like this would be hard to accomplish today, seeing that there is no money.
This is my translation: “On the VI centenary of the death of Dante Alighieri the Naval Commandant of Venice, Admiral G. Pepe, restored and beautified the entrance facade of the Arsenal. On that occasion the marble monument of the XVI century, placed here at the side, which after many transfers found itself incomplete and defaced on the crumbling wall of the old workshop was restored and completed and transferred to the public view. Venice September 1921.” Of course a noble work like this would be hard to accomplish today, seeing that there is no money.
Enough exploration. Carnival begins on Saturday and my friend, Dino, who is a retired baker, makes the most divine fritole on this mortal earth. He gave us eight, just out of the vat. They are smaller and lighter than the bocce balls sold as fritole in the pastry shops. These are little candied sugared slightly greasy clouds. I wait all year for these things and they are among the few things that make Carnival worthwhile. Sorry, they're all gone now.
Enough exploration. Carnival begins on Saturday and my friend, Dino, who is a retired baker, makes the most divine fritole on this mortal earth. He gave us eight, just out of the vat. They are smaller and lighter than the bocce balls sold as fritole in the pastry shops. These are little candied sugared slightly greasy clouds. I wait all year for these works of art and they are among the few things that make Carnival worthwhile. Sorry, they’re all gone now.

 

This is what was floating by the dock at the Giardini: a television. But that's not the really funny part. What baffles me isn't that somebody threw it into the water -- we all know how that goes -- but that it has floated here in this exact spot for more than 24 hours. Have the tides gone on strike?
This is what was floating by the dock at the Giardini: a television. But that’s not the really funny part. What baffles me isn’t that somebody threw it into the water — we all know how that goes — but that it has floated here in this exact spot for more than 24 hours. Have the tides gone on strike?
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History

The name game

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According to the article, there are TK people in Venice with the last name Vianello.
“The Vianellos beat everybody,” the headline states.  “The foreigners increase.” According to the article, there are 4339 people in the Comune of Venice with the last name Vianello.  I’m sorry to see that the Barbarigos and Mocenigos have gone the way of the great auk, though some once-noble families (Moro, Dona’) are on the list.

Not a game at all, but shards of information I consider interesting, in an ephemeral sort of way.  My favorite kind.

Meeting people here, or even just reading about them in the paper, will fairly quickly give you the sensation that there is only a handful of last names in Venice.  Reading Venetian history has the same effect.  There were 120 doges, and every five minutes it’s a Mocenigo or a Morosini or a Barbarigo or a Contarini (I feel a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song coming on).

In daily life nowadays, it’s Vianello or Zennaro or Busetto or Scarpa, all at some point from Pellestrina, where so many with these surnames dwell — and have dwelled — that the town is divided into four sections, each named for one of those specific tribes.  This situation was created by doge Andrea Contarini, who in 1380 sent the four eponymous families from Chioggia to Pellestrina to reconstruct and inhabit the former town which had been destroyed by the Genoese in the “War of Chioggia” (1378-1381).

The density of these four names in Pellestrina is such that the post office finally gave permission to put nicknames on addresses, to give some hope of distinguishing between the scores of individuals with the same first and last name, some of them even living at the same location.

In the Comune at large, Costantinis and Penzos abound, and every year there is a bumper crop of D’Estes and Dei Rossis.  Each name has its own provenance; some of them are obvious (“Sartori” means “tailors,” “Tagliapietra” means “stonecutter,” with which Venice had to have been infested) and some are more obscure (“Ballarin” meant “sawyer,” and “Bastasi” were the porters, specifically for the Customs or the quarantine islands).

Now comes the tricky part: The list enumerates
As we see, there are more Hossains now than Senos or even than Chens.  But after 500 years they might well be on the list of Venetians, if there’s still a Venice.

I’ve been here long enough — and it doesn’t mean you need to have spent a LONG time — to recognize the provenance of many of these names.  If you hear one of these, you have a good chance of knowing where the person comes (or came) from:

Chioggia:  Penzo, Pesce, Boscolo, Tiozzo, Padoan, Doria

Burano:  Vio, Costantini, Zane, Tagliapietra, Seno

San Pietro in Volta:  Ballarin, Ghezzo

Murano:  Toso, Gallo, Ferro, Schiavon

Cavallino:  Berton 

Venice (Dorsoduro): Pitteri

A few tidbits from the article, which are not evident in the table of numbers but are obvious to anyone living here:

First is that during the past ten years, the number of individuals bearing each surname has diminished.  That’s just part of the well-known shrinkage of Venetians.

Second — also fairly obvious to locals — is the addition of foreign surnames.  Of course, my surname is foreign too (German-Swiss), but I’ve been happy to disappear among many Venetians whose last names also begin with “Z,” and they aren’t German, either:  Zane and Zanella and Zuin and Zuliani.  It’s great down here at the end of the alphabet, I’ve finally got company.

As you easily notice, Muslim and Asian names are becoming more numerous.  (I realize that “Muslim” is not a nationality, nor a geographical area, but while the bearers of these names are most likely from Bangladesh, I decided not to guess).

So where would the “Vianello” clan come from?  According to my dictionary of Italian surnames, it springs from Viani, which isn’t a place, as far as I can determine, but a basic root-name.  Lino hypothesizes that it could derive from “villani” (pronounced vee-AH-nee in Venetian), which means farmers, tillers of the soil — “villein,” in the feudal terminology, a partially-free serf.  You can still hear someone around here vilify another person by calling him a “villano,” and they don’t mean “villain” — they mean clod, churl, oaf.

“Rossi” means “reds.”  It’s the most common surname in Italy, though in the Southern half it is often rendered “Russo” (the second-most common surname in Italy).  It most likely came from a personage with some strikingly red attribute, such as hair, beard, or skin.  Or all three.

“Scarpa” — It means “shoe,” so I’m guessing their forebears were shoe-makers, though then again, it’s possible that it was once somebody’s nickname (in Venice, at least, nicknames are fairly common and the person bears it for life and even sometimes leaves it to his children.)  However, another hypothesis holds that it could be a variation of Karpathos, the Greek island known as “Scarpanto” in Venetian, and which formed part of the Venetian “Sea State” from 1306 to 1538, plenty long to germinate names.  Thousands of Greeks lived in Venice, so the place name may have shifted to a personal name.

There are lots of names that come from places, sometimes Venetianized, such as:

Visentin (vee-zen-TEEN): Vicentino, or from Vicenza

Piasentini (pya-zen-TEE-nee): Piacentino, or from Piacenza

Veronese: from Verona

Trevisan (treh-vee-ZAHN): from Treviso

Furlan (foor-LAHN): from Friuli

Schiavon (skyah-VOHN): from Schiavonia, later Slavonia, which is now the easternmost part of Croatia. The Venetians were known to trade, among other valuable merchandise, in slaves, which often came from Central Asia or the Balkan hinterland. “Schiavo” (SKYA-voh), conveniently shortened, means “slave.”  Slav – Slave.  Not made up.

The names and the centuries may change, but the crime described on a plaque inside the Arsenal remains the same (translated by me):
The names may change, but the activity described on a plaque inside the Arsenal remains the same regardless of time, nation, or blood type (translated by me): “5 June 1743 Gabriel di Ferdinando was the Adjutant of the Admiral of the Arsenal He was banished under threat of hanging for being an unfaithful administrator guilty of enormous extremely grave detriments inflicted in the management of the public capital.”

 

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