Tag: Arsenal

the phantom cemetery

July 14, 2025 9 Comments

There used to be a cemetery here, but you’ll never guess why. Our first and only hint is carved onto the lintel of the small door to the left of the big door.

It’s not that I go out looking for trivia, it just seems to drift into my lane. And by the way, I’m not convinced that “trivia” deserves its negative connotations. Mount Everest is made of atoms, after all, and it appears that much of life is composed of trivia.

There once was a cemetery in the campo next to the basilica of Saints Giovanni and Paolo. Plenty of churches here had cemeteries, but these dear departed weren’t Venetians. They were Ledrensi, people from the Ledro valley near Lake Garda. (Not to classify them as trivia.) Six hundred years ago they had become so important to Venice and its Arsenal that they were given many important privileges, up to and including their own burial ground. I can’t tell you why the Ledrensi would have chosen to spend eternity here rather than their home parish up in the mountains, but let’s be impressed that the Venetian government wanted to bestow this honor on them.

This is a pretend door. The lintel, though, is genuine; it was moved here from the wall that used to enclose the cemetery.

The cemetery wall is clearly visible on the map of Venice drawn by Jacopo de’ Barbari in 1500. This legendary and inexhaustible fount of knowledge can be seen in the Correr Museum. For private delectation, you can download the map here. Knock yourself out zooming on it.

Nothing to see here. The cemetery, which had been in the area behind the tall statue, had been removed by the time Canaletto painted “Il Campo di SS Giovanni e Paolo a Venezia, col monumento di Bartolomeo Colleoni 1736/1740.” (Wikimedia Commons)

The people in the Ledro Valley enjoyed a few important advantages — geography, for one thing. The valley offered the fastest route between the area near Lake Garda and Brescia, and this was of huge strategic importance to Venice during the war with the Visconti, the lords of Milan. (Of course you remember the Lombard Wars that went on for an invigorating 31 years from 1423 to 1454.) Furthermore, the Ledrensi fought for Venice in a few important battles up in their valley. As early as 1426 doge Francesco Foscari, in recognition of their valor, granted them various benefits and exemptions that were confirmed in 1440 and 1445. Venetian troops remained in the Ledro valley till 1509.

Google Maps doesn’t realize that the light-blue route is exactly the one that the Venetians were trying to avoid — it’s the western, dark-blue path that took them safely from the northern Veneto to Brescia.

The orange area was Venetian territory in the late 1400’s, but if you were at war with Milan you wouldn’t have traveled to the battlefield on the easy straight east-west line we use today on the highway. That would have forced you to cross enemy territory, the Duchy of Mantova. The mountains were safer.

Another view of how Lake Garda divided the Venetian territories (green).

But the Ledrensi’s greatest advantage was their forests. Venetian archives show that from the 1200’s there were workers in Venice from the Ledro valley, but by the 1500’s the relationship had evolved. Venice depended on the Ledro valley for the resin tapped from the area’s larch and Scots pine. By the 1600’s the town of Tiarno di Sopra had become famous for its clay ovens that transformed the resin into pitch, essential for caulking the ships in the Arsenal.

More and more men of Ledro — also referred to as the Trentina Nation, as coming from the area near Trento — began to migrate to Venice to work. They were allowed to work as bastasi and cargadori (porters and stevedores) in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the association of the Germanic merchants. Even more important, they worked in the Arsenal as segadori (sawyers reducing tree trunks to planks for building ships), and as ligadori, exclusively responsible for loading and unloading of the ships in the Arsenal. And of course, as caulkers. Some of these men didn’t return to the mountains but stayed in Venice permanently, becoming better-off certainly than they’d been back home.

I suppose it’s not strange that they’d have wanted to be interred in Venice, which had been for some a sort of Promised Land. At least we still have the lintel.

“Cemetery of the Nation of the Valley of Ledro.”

This hidden jewel of Venetian history was carefully explained on a site I discovered by chance, and I offer sincere admiration to its creator. His name is Alfonso Bussolin and his life’s work is Conoscere Venezia (know Venice). If you read Italian you’re going to have a fabulous time wandering around this man’s research.

Problems

everything should be objected to

June 22, 2025 19 Comments

Too much is going on in the world, things that involve life and death — I’m sure you’ve noticed that — so news from Venice is almost forced to verge on the frivolous.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that here in the most-beautiful-city-in-the-world we don’t have our problems. Big ones, small ones, transient, permanent, easily resolvable if one wanted to, of all shapes and sizes and relative atomic masses. It’s very hard to keep track of them all, much less grasp their true importance. They’re all important!

Example: The imminent wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez here sometime next week, by most reports. The date is being changed secretly, or something, for some reason. I think it’s to avoid protesters, a group of which has already made its views known. There are people who object to everything, and now they’ve got this wedding in their sights. I have to say that although I tend to have an opinion on almost everything, this is one subject that defeats me. Unless “Why should I care?” is an opinion.

Stay with me. As you know, those who objected to the big cruise ships passing in the bacino of San Marco to the Zona Marittima finally succeeded in banishing them. Peace, joy and tranquility has reigned, except among the 5,000 families or so who lost their employment in the managing and supplying of these ships. But fine. No ships. You’d think the protesters would be happy. You’d think.

Now Bezos and Sanchez heave to on the horizon, and millions of dollars are going to be spent here over the course of a few undefined days to get the lovebirds hitched. The “No Bezos” contingent is strenuously opposed to this. (I can understand objecting to him as him, if you like, but I can’t see why his wedding deserves dissent.) I do recall there was justifiable anger from the citizens during last year’s Film Festival, for which all of the taxis had been booked over the course of several days. All. The. Taxis. The mayor has reassured the apprehensive citizens that this would not be repeated during the nuptial festivities.

Fun Fact: The Gazzettino reports that some 80 private planes are expected to arrive for the big event. Let’s see, 200 guests divided by 80 makes 2.5 people per plane. So how are the entourages expected to get here? Or maybe the 80 planes are for the stylists and equerries and the Mistress of the Robes and the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber and the Master of the Revels and the rest of the swarm? The happy soon-to-be-newlyweds may well be ensconced on Bezos’ 500-million-dollar yacht, which is already here.

Now the objectors are clamoring against the luxury yachts. A number of luxury yachts are also expected — just look at (or imagine) the guest list. But ever since Covid hardly any big yachts stop by anymore. The Riva degli Schiavoni used to be lined with them, but only a few have tentatively returned, briefly. But the protesters are in full sail. First it was No Big Ships! Now it’s No Yachts! Jeez, people. Are you against literally everything?

I love the yachts, I’ll just say it. I could bury you with photos I’ve made. Here’s some more atmosphere:

So you get the idea. Maybe these yachts make you want to protest; I could easily protest that I don’t have one, but I can’t figure out how to object to you having one. Still, it seems clear that the world is in big trouble whether or not the yachts and/or their oligarchs/celebrities come to Venice or anywhere else. So in whatever time is left to us in the apocalyptic period we’re going through, it seems to me that serious complaints should not be wasted on yachts. By all means get out your bedsheets and markers but I hope you won’t be writing “No Yachts.” Because a real oligarch will just get something else, and it still won’t be yours.

“Preparing the days of common resistence where everyone can say ‘No Space for Bezos!'” And up in the right-hand corner somebody who objects to the objectors has scribbled “Rammollitti andate a lavorare!” (“Wimps! Go to work!”).

“Wedding of Bezos in Venice? Also no! Jeff Bezos thinks he can buy the entire city. Let’s organize the party!” That sounds kind of menacing. At the bottom a strip has been torn off that said “No space for oligarchs.” I think we’ve gotten to the root of the problem.

Another famous and important group of protesters has joined the chat. I mean, the celebrations.

Quick promotion of the boat moored nearby and the film they projected aboard last night. They did get the tape-up-the-flags job done quickly and that’s important. This little slip could happen to anybody.

But this is just temporary tumult. They’ll be here, with their military security personnel blocking off streets and canals — it will be annoying as all get-out even while the couple assures everybody that they love Venice. But it won’t last long and then it’ll be over.

Moving on! Let’s talk about trees instead. They’ve suddenly become more important than yachts because of a tragedy that struck at Piazzale Roma, a place more banal than which it would be difficult to find. But tragedies — or in this case, trees — don’t have much awareness of banality.

You have to watch out for pickpockets and now you have to also watch out for 50-foot (15 meters) trees. (La Nuova Venezia)

I doubt any visitors have given much thought to Venice, City of Trees, but on June 2 a majestic holm oak at Piazzale Roma was heard creaking (wind was not exceptional that afternoon) and then it suddenly keeled over onto a group of 12 people who were hanging around. Two of the victims were seriously injured, one of them a woman with a fractured spine.

June 2 is a national holiday, so of course there were plenty of people everywhere. But it was also the wedding day (weddings again) of a couple waiting at Palazzo Cavalli for their guests to arrive. Some of the tree’s victims had been heading to the ceremony, which was naturally called off.

So now the city is frantically monitoring the trees and in the Giardini, and undoubtedly elsewhere, we see stumps and cut-up branches waiting to be taken away. But hold on: Some concerned citizens are objecting to all this. They maintain that suddenly the trees are in at least as much danger as the people who walk near them.

Of course it’s wrong to leave trees wobbling with fungus-ridden roots (one hypothesis for the disaster), but there is a case being made that it is just as wrong to remove trees that, according to a new group of protesters, never showed the smallest defect. Obviously we don’t want trees that are going to fall on us, but which ones are we saving? Are honest, law-abiding, tax-paying trees going to be sacrificed because of a few rotten ones? That’s what it looks like to those who are now protesting what suddenly appears to be the the wholesale slaughter of Venetian trees. A group has formed, of course, and the other evening on the Giudecca I passed a table set up by persons collecting signatures on a petition entitled “Save the Trees.”

If Venice is now in the hands of lumberjacks working overtime, all I can say is that clearly it was long past time to have checked the condition of the city’s trees and the city should be ashamed. And I’m sorry that people had to suffer in order for this admittedly pretty important task to finally get bumped way up near the top of the city’s “DO TODAY ASAP URGENT PRIORITY” to-do list.

This statue of Francesco Querini at the “Giardini Pubblici” vaporetto stop has stood for more than a century in the shade of ever-growing trees.

Everything looked fine. But appearance are so deceiving.

Turns out he was in mortal danger. Now he’s baking in the sun after the potentially dangerous trees have been excised. Even half of a magnolia was ready to strike.

Suddenly there’s wood everywhere. The newspaper said that at least seven trees had been earmarked for removal in the viale Garibaldi alone, that long shady stretch between via Garibaldi and the vaporetto stop at the Giardini. Seven. And we just kept traipsing along as if everything was fine.

I can see how this tree was harboring a secret.

Hey, stop for a minute. While everybody’s losing sleep about dangerous trees, it seems that nobody’s interested in objecting to the blatant neglect of simple things that make a city look decent. Thousands of locals and tourists walk through the Giardini Pubblici every day. Why do the benches have to look like they’ve been salvaged from some shipwreck? This didn’t happen overnight. There’s no money for paint? This is just dumb. Yes, I object.

Even my sainted mother would have objected to this. First, that this misfortune occurred, and second, that it has been left like that for weeks. It looks stupid. This is how “Save the Benches” groups (I made that up) get organized.

Some protests, however, are about things that are more important than weddings and forestry. I’m thinking about the proposed re-routing of the 4.1 and 4.2 vaporettos. There are two objections to this notion. One is convenience (sudden lack of), and the other is probable damage to the fondamente of the Arsenal canal. Plenty of people are now up in arms and collecting signatures against this potential change.

This route used to exist; I remember passing this way back in the mid-Eighties — it was convenient and a heck of a way to see a glimpse of the city that’s closed to the public.

But then it was decided to send the boats the long way around Sant’ Elena on their path from the Arsenale stop to the Fondamente Nove, as a clear and wonderful service to the semi-isolated residents of the area who needed more than just one line.

But no longer. The residents of farthest Castello and their needs/desires have dropped off the list of municipal priorities (I’m beginning to wonder if there even is such a list), and the people aren’t happy. Yes, the 5.1 and 5.2 will continue to serve San Pietro di Castello, but there is also that pervasive sensation that tourists take precedence over the locals (let’s speed up the trip to Murano and not waste time going around the touristic dead-end of Sant’ Elena). And, as I say, there’s also the likelihood that waves will damage the walls of the canal, which somebody ought to be thinking about in whatever time is left over from felling lumber.

Without the 4.1, anyone at Sant’ Elena that needs to go to the hospital will have to take the 5.1 to the Lido and change there for the 4.1. Anyone at San Pietro di Castello who needs to go to San Zaccaria will have to take the 5.1 and go to the Lido and change there for the 5.2. Does that sound like anybody at the ACTV Planning Office and Marching and Chowder Society is particularly interested in life at the local level?

The rio dell’Arsenale leads from the lagoon toward the Arsenal. One hopes the schedule will ensure that the northbound and southbound vaporettos don’t meet here. The more serious consideration is the effect of the waves on the fondamente lining the canal.

I realize that, as I mentioned, the vaporettos managed to pass through here several decades ago. I just have a different outlook on the procedure this time. Looks kind of tight here between the pilings and the footbridge. Both of which can be adjusted. Somewhat. Looking at you, high tide.

I see four tricky little points to get through, but I know there won’t be any problems. The vaporetto captains are fine. Not sure about the waves hitting the fondamente in what is still an area belonging to the Navy, but I suspect the city is working to resolve that issue. Navy proprietorship, I mean, not the waves. The city doesn’t care about waves.

I can tell you from experience that the force of the tide through this very narrow space is something to take into consideration. But the vaporettos have motors, so no worries.

Looking at the entrance into the Arsenal from the northern lagoon. The hole in the wall was made years ago for the express purpose of creating a space for the vaporettos to pass through, so why am I wasting time thinking about all this? What really matters is the enormous inconvenience this new plan would impose on the locals. But, like the waves, that doesn’t seem to matter.

In conclusion, let me bring up a genuine problem. There is a desperate need to find and keep enough family doctors to care for the admittedly dwindling population. They are called “medici di base,” or basic doctors, and under the national health system you have to have one. Whatever procedure you may require has to start with an official request (I call it a work order) from your assigned doctor, and some doctors have up to 1,000 assigned patients. The older doctors retire, the younger doctors don’t stick around. You can wake up and find yourself literally without an assigned doctor, it has happened to us more than once. This will never make international, news (celebrity weddings are so much more engrossing), but I can assure you it’s one of the most important problems that eastern Castello, if not Venetians everywhere, is worried about.

A few days ago a big public meeting was held in via Garibaldi at which various citizens’ groups expressed their complaints — and not for the first time — to assorted official representatives (politicians and representatives of the health system). Their thoughts were clear from the home-made banners, and I expect that these banners are stored close at hand for the next inevitable outcry from the struggling locals. Note: AULSS stands for Azienda Unita’ Locale Socio Sanitaria, or Unified Local Social Health Agency. Venice’s section is #3.

(L to R, translated by me): The family doctor is a right. AULSS 3 less propaganda and more territorial services. AULSS we’re fed up. We want family doctors. AULSS We’re fed up. Family doctors an adequate number at Castello and Sant’ Elena. We’re indignant!!

I sometimes think the city is just waiting us out, considering that the population is falling by 1,500 per year.

So problems! There are plenty to choose from, and these aren’t even all of them. I’m beginning to suspect that the city government has become desensitized. Maybe all this is just background noise to them by now.

Meanwhile, all these annoying little issues will be swamped for the next week by the drama and glamor of Bezos/Sanchez. We should be glad of a little change of pace?

Venice’s defenders may seem to be mere shadows, but they’re still there.

Events

G20 coming to town

July 4, 2021 15 Comments

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.”

Problems

Drink up (water main break)

January 20, 2018 10 Comments

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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