Jacopo Sansovino | Venice: I am not making this up

So I now walk away from the curious fresco crowned by the streetlight, and focus my attention on the streetlights themselves. We take them for granted, but lighting up Venice was an endeavor that went on for centuries and involved no granting at all.

This is the Ponte dei Ferali, looking east toward the church of San Zulian.

Ponte dei Ferali, looking west toward Calle Fiubera. As far back as the 1200’s the *feraleri*, or makers of streetlights, had set up their shops on nearby streets, as well as on the bridge itself (hence the name).

This is a *feral*; you’ve seen them all over the city in various sizes and shapes. They brought Venice to blazing life (eventually). Oil was the best they could do until 1843, after which gas was the combustible. Between 1915 and 1918 Venice returned to primeval darkness, hiding from Austrian bombardment, although the bombs still fell. There are numerous plaques around the city commemorating the destruction caused by what reached a total of 1,029 bombs. (In a single night — February 26-27, 1918 — 300 bombs, explosive and incendiary, were launched on the city.) Light returned with peace, but in 1927 gas gave way to electricity.

Even though streetlighting in many places has now reached intense levels, there are still stretches of street here and there that reveal what darkness used to mean. I’m not referring to the medieval days with their timid little lamps at streetcorners; even as recently as the late Nineties the only light in the darkness of our stretch of fondamenta between Santa Margherita and Santa Marta was the glow from a single shop window. I called it the “lighthouse of the neighborhood.” When the street lights were finally installed, the glare was so extreme that I felt like we were walking home across a football field on game night.

Via Garibaldi gleams in the distance, but in this tiny calle you’re on your own.

For centuries the streets had been illuminated to a feeble degree only by the faint flickering from the little lamps (cesendelli) at shrines on various street corners. “Be home by dark” really meant something because by 1128, due to the inordinate number of corpses found lying around the streets in the morning, the government began to take seriously the need to create real illumination.

Enter the ferali, or also farai, of various sizes, providing a great new line of work for their makers, the feraleri (not to mention the oil merchants). The parish priest was responsible for maintaining them, but the expense was covered by the government. By 1214 there were enough feraleri to merit their own scuola, or guild, and their devotional altar was in the nearby church of San Zulian. Fun fact: There is an osteria in Dorsoduro named Ai Do Farai, Venetian for “at the two streetlamps.”

But there were still plenty of dark streets to navigate on your way home from the theatre, or to secretly visit your lady- or boyfriend, or whatever you were up to after sundown. In 1450 the Venetian government had become so exasperated by the nocturnal carnage that it passed a law requiring people to carry a light– candles, lanterns, torches — when they were out at night. (Yes: We order you to protect your life! See: Seatbelts.) Not only was this a good idea in itself, but it was equally good as a job.

Enter the codega (CODE-eh-ga). He was a very poor hired man who waited with a lantern outside theatres, gambling houses, or other festive places, or was available on call, to light your way to wherever you were going next. Sometimes the lantern was suspended from a long pole.

The codega’s candle was better than nothing, but those who carried oil lanterns undoubtedly shed more light. The oil was usually rendered pig fat (Venice is so romantic); it’s generally accepted that the word itself derived from *cotica*, or pork rind.

Once your eyes adjust to the ambient light, these lamps seem adequate. Not Fifth Avenue, true, but better than a candle.

Your mind adjusts this scene to say the street is lit. You instinctively ignore the dark intervals because you’re on the way to the next little luminescent island.

Now just imagine the scene without the streetlights. And speaking of wartime blackouts, the same curfew applied during the Second World War. Anyone born in the late Thirties only knew the city as dark at night. Lino remembers when the lights were turned on after peace was declared. It was the first time in his life he’d ever seen the streets lit up, and what he remembers wasn’t so much the brightness itself as everyone in the neighborhood waiting outside together for the lights to come on, and how they clapped and rejoiced when it did.

In 1719 a nobleman named Stefano Lippomano is regarded as being the bright spark who convinced the shopkeepers around San Marco to put an oil lamp near their shops between the Mercerie and the Rialto. Did they need much convincing? (“You’ll make more money this way…”.) This worthy idea spread through the city to the joy of everyone except — naturally — the codeghe.

In 1726 a proclamation bearing the seal of the Signori di notte al criminal (the police magistrates) denounced the habit that the humble lantern-carriers had developed of smashing the streetlamps and carrying away their wrought-iron supports. It would be no comfort at all to the embattled men to know that one of the most prestigous international awards for innovation in lighting today is called the Codega Award.

Fun fact: Between San Marco and Rialto is the Hotel Al Codega. Presumably well-lit.

The codega walking you home. This illustration is one of a famous series of illustrations by Gaetano Zompini, who between 1746 and 1754 created a collection of scenes of everyday jobs practiced in the streets of Venice. The new idea of attaching his lantern to a wall and sending HIM home was one of those many human blows that mark the march of progress.

But smashing the lamps was futile — streetlights were the future. Crime was down at last, and between 1721 and 1732 the Signori di notte al criminal created a system of 834 public streetlights — not a lot, but it was a start — paid for by voluntary contributions. There were private lights on palace balconies, but the public lamps were lit by a public lamplighter, paid for by the magistrate.

The old lamplighter. He appears to be carrying lighted oil up the ladder. Seems risky in lots of ways but a better alternative (easier? cheaper?) hadn’t presented itself.

Everything settled now? Not even close. The problems in organizing and maintaining this municipal necessity were endless. By 1740 there were 1,046 public streetlights, but those voluntary contributions weren’t nearly enough to cover expenses and so a tax was levied on every “head of family.” The astonishing inequality of this tax burden (indigent widows paid the same as patrician clans) led to its abolition in 1756.

Flaws and defects in this worthy undertaking abounded. Service was terrible. The lamplighters didn’t always light (or keep alight) the lamps; the oil destined for burning turned out to be of an even lower quality than agreed (and paid for), and also was somehow inexplicably often in short supply, except for that time when the inspector general made a surprise visit to the warehouse and discovered 40,000 more liters of oil than were listed on the register; the lamps themselves weren’t especially sturdy, being made of sheet metal, often tin; the feraleri were not always of a consistently high level of skill or reliability (not charlatans, exactly….); and the fragility of a flame floating in oil facing wind and storms was all too evident. The brightness of everybody’s hopes was faint in comparison to the reality of, well, reality. The Serenissima kept trying to improve the situation by giving out new contracts to suppliers and artisans but graft and corruption reigned. The courts were full of complaints and denunciations, and those were only the most serious cases. But there was no going back.

This is dawn in the winter. Every little bit helps.

Despite all these problems, Venice at night had become something phenomenal. Carlo Goldoni, returning to Venice in 1733 after some time away, was astounded by what he found.

“Independent of the street illumination, there is that of the shops that stay open in all weathers until 10:00 at night and a great part of them don’t close until midnight, and plenty of others don’t close at all.” I pause to let that sink in.

He goes on: “In Venice you find at midnight, just as at midday, food being sold in the open, all the osterie are open, and beautiful dinners prepared in dozens of hotels and neighborhoods; because it isn’t so common in Venice that the diners are of high society dinners, but rather the really cheap little places (ritrovi di lira e soldo) are where you find the groups of the greatest liveliness and liberty.” In other words, the regular folks out there living it all the way up.

He concludes: “In summertime the Piazza San Marco and surrounding areas are busier at night than during the day, with men and women of every sort.”

Goldoni might have been talking about something like this.

By 1775 there were 1,778 public streetlights. Still not enough. On September 7, 1796 the magistrates proposed installing at least “one lamp every hundred paces.” So 1,145 additional lamps were set up, and duly noted in the register (catastico) that hadn’t been updated since 1740.

I’m sure this improvement got compliments from the French when Napoleon arrived less than a year later, and thereafter from the Austrians who moved in. There were more than 2030 lamps around the city by then. For any trivia maniacs, at the beginning of the 1800’s there were 12 on the Giudecca, 27 in the Ghetto, 76 in the Piazza San Marco, and 1915 scattered elsewhere around the city. The Austrian occupiers’ shiny new department responsible for “police, streets, canals and illumination of the city” found itself stuck with the same problems that had bedeviled the late great Republic for centuries. Because, you know, people.

Lights by day mostly blend into the scenery.

Though lights by day do have their own fascination, when the non-artificial light is right.

Light at early twilight is lovely, though 500 years ago most people might not have begun to light the lamps just yet.

This streetlight is now as common as its more poetic predecessors.

Many streetlamps have been placed on pedestals. Highly convenient for dogs, obviously, but the real motive was almost certainly to protect them from corrosion, to which many have fallen victim. Acqua alta has damaged not only marble, but iron.

The lights in Venice, in the houses as well as on the streets, ran on gas produced by burning coal — coke, to be precise. Italy is full of decommissioned “gasometers” like the two left abandoned near San Francesco de la Vigna. (There was also one at Santa Marta, across the canal from where the prison currently sits.) Providing this crucial industrial service right next to a 16th-century church designed by Jacopo Sansovino and Andrea Palladio, and its adjacent Franciscan monastery, seems pretty crazy, but the land was there and space in Venice is valued far above rubies.

In 1969 came the switch from coal gas to methane, and the future of these relics of industrial archaeology has become as Byzantine as everything else here. The neighbors want a sports center for the kids (three high schools within a very tight radius); a German company proposed converting them to luxury hotels but got tired of waiting for the bureaucracy to conclude its Byzantine operations, and now luxury apartments have been mooted. As long as it’s luxury, that’s all that matters. After all, somebody is going to have to pay the cost of cleaning up the century of environmental horror in the soil.

A century ago, more or less, six of these “gasometers” were set up in farthest Castello near San Francesco de la Vigna, where practicality ruled over pesky artistic concerns. The two survivors here date from 1882 and 1926. Controversy continues to swirl around the fate of these structures but I mention them only because of their once-vital role in providing electric current to the city by producing gas from burning coal.

To recapitulate: Lighting Venice evolved over the generations from pig fat to methane. The world is amazed by building a city on water, but I have to confess that illuminating it was not much less impressive. If you were to want to read more — much more, and better — I recommend the lavishly illustrated “The Lights of Venice,” an extraordinary book published online in 2022 by the Fondazione Neri. I’d gladly have read it all myself, but I still haven’t finished War and Peace. But at least “Lights” has a happy ending.

Piazza_San_Marco_Looking_toward_San_Geminiano_ca_1735 canaletto — One of Napoleon’s most famous, and easy to notice, alterations to Venice was the destruction of the church of San Geminiano in the “mouth” of the Piazza San Marco, here shown in a painting by Canaletto. It was designed by Jacopo Sansovino and had been there for several centuries, but the little corporal wanted to build a ballroom and the church was in the way.

800px-Naya,_Carlo_(1816-1882)_-_Venezia_-_Piazza_S._Marco_dalla_porta_centrale_della_Chiesa — The result was a homogeneous stretch of building dubbed the “Ala Napoleonica,” or “Napoleonic Wing.” The space is now occupied by the Correr Museum. (Naya Collection).

Talk about Venetian history long enough — say, eight minutes, or even fewer — and you will almost certainly refer at least once to Napoleon Bonaparte. If you are somehow able to avoid mentioning him, you should embed the secret in a cellphone game because I think it would be a challenge.

And why is this? Because on May 12, 1797, his army entered Venice and the Venetian Republic fell forever. That was one day. Then the damage really began.

Napoleon craved Venice for several reasons, one of which was that it was the richest city in Europe. He needed money to pay for his wars, and when he was done, the city was eviscerated of tons of art works, precious metals, and gems. His soldiers spent two weeks carting treasures out of the basilica of San Marco. What he stripped from the “Bucintoro,” the doge’s state barge, was enough to keep most of us in Kobe steak for the rest of our lives.

Even if you didn’t know that, you walk through his handiwork in the course of any ordinary stroll here — through campos named for saints whose churches are nowhere to be found, for example — because the Venice we see today is the result of months of devastation wrought upon the city in the fulfillment of his ideas.

IMG_8599 napoleon — Napoleon decided that the city needed a public garden — Le Bois du Castello? — more than it needed the buildings which occupied the space where the Giardini Pubblici are today. Yes, the trees are nice. So were the church and convent of San Domenico, the church and convent of San Nicolo’ di Bari, the “hospital” of the marinai, or sailors, the church and convent of the Concezione di Maria Vergine , and the church and convent of Sant’Antonio Abate.

If you want to try to imagine the city before it was disemboweled (I often try, and usually fail), here is a partial list of the buildings Napoleon got his hands on. My source is “Storie delle Chiese dei Monasteri delle Scuole di Venezia Rapinate e Distrutte da Napoleone Bonaparte” by Cesare Zangirolami (Filippi Editore – Venezia). Some of these structures were completely demolished, some merely gutted and abandoned, or decommissioned, so to speak, like sinking battleships, and used as warehouses (coal, tobacco, etc.) or assorted other really practical purposes, such as barracks. A few have been restored and resuscitated, but not to their former use — you’ll recognize the names of some you’ll have at least walked past. This list does not include the 80-some palaces he razed. Nor the tombs of doges and patricians which have disappeared. But the book does list each work of art which is gone forever.

Abbey of San Cipriano

Churches:

Dell’Anconeta. Sant’Agnese, Sant’Agostino, Sant’Anna, Sant’Antonio Abate, Sant’Anzolo, Sant’Apollonia, Sant’Aponal, dell’Ascensione, San Basegio, San Basso, San Bernardo, San Biagio, San Biagio e Cataldo, San Boldo, San Bonaventura, Cavalieri di Malta, della Celestia, delle Convertite, del Corpus Domini, della Croce, della Croce alla Zuecca, San Cataldo, Santa Chiara, Santa Chiara di Murano, Santi Cosma e Damiano, San Daniele, San Domenico, Sant’Elena, Santi Filippo e Giacomo, San Geminiano, San Giacomo di Rialto, San Giacomo della Zuecca, San Giovanni Battista, San Giovanni Battista dei Battuti, San Giovanni dei Furlani, San Giovanni Laterano, San Girolamo, San Giuseppe di Murano, Santa Giustina, della Grazia, San Gregorio, Santa Lena, San Leonardo, San Lorenzo, Santi Marco e Andrea, Santa Margarita (sic), Santa Maria Annunziata, Santa Maria Celeste, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Santa Maria della Carita’, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Santa Maria delle Vergini, Santa Maria del Pianto, Santa Maria Maddalena, Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Maria Nova, Santa Marina, Santa Marta, San Martino Vescovo, San Matteo Apostolo, San Matteo di Murano, San Mattia, San Maurizio, San Michele Arcangelo, San Nicoletto della Lattuga, San Nicolo’ di Bari, Ognissanti, San Paternian, San Pietro Martire, San Provolo, del Santo Sepolcro, dello Spirito Santo, San Salvador di Murano, Santa Scolastica, San Sebastiano, San Severo, Santa Sofia, San Stefano di Murano, San Stin, Santa Ternita, della Trasfigurazione, della Santissima Trinita’, dell’Umilta’, San Vio.

Islands (not the islands themselves but the edifices upon them) :

Sant’Andrea, la Certosa, San Cristoforo della Pace, San Giorgio in Alga, della Grazia, San Secondo.

Monasteries: (in some cases the structures remain and are even in use, but he dismembered their congregations, some of which were admittedly small, but still. I’ve been to many offices which are housed in former convents and cloisters).

Sant’Anna, Sant’Antonio Abate, San Bernardo, Santi Biagio e Cataldo, Santa Chiara di Murano, Santi Cosma e Damiano, della Croce, San Daniele, delle Dimesse, San Domenico, San Francesco della Vigna, San Giacomo, San Giovanni Battista, San Giovanni Laterano, San Giuseppe, San Lorenzo, Santi Marco e Andrea, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Santa Maria dei Servi, Santa Maria delle Vergini, Santa Maria del Pianto, Santa Maria Maddalena, San Martino Vescovo, San Matteo, San Mattia, San Michele di Murano, San Pietro Martire, del Santo Sepolcro.

450px-Venezia_-_Ex_Scola_degli_albanesi_(sec._XV)_-_Foto_Giovanni_Dall'Orto,_12-Aug-2007_-_01 — The Scuola degli Albanesi in Calle del Piovan. It’s really hard to notice, let alone appreciate, this wonderful image in such a narrow street. (Photo: John Dall’Orco)

Oratorio della Concezione, Oratorio di Sant’Orsola.

Ospitale degli Incurabili, Ospitale dei Marinai.

Patriarcato (at San Pietro di Castello, the palace of the Patriarch of Venice till 1807, when San Marco was made the city’s cathedral).

Priorato (Priory) di Malta

Scuole (headquarters of the many guilds and confraternities):

degli Albanesi, della Carita’, San Francesco, San Girolamo, San Giovanni dei Battuti, San Giovanni Evangelista, della Madonna della Pace, San Marco, Santa Maria e Cristoforo, dei Mercanti, della Misericordia, del Nome di Gesu’, dei Pittori, della Santissima Trinita’, dei Stampatori e Librai, San Stefano, San Teodoro, dei Varoteri.

And people talk about Attila.

let’s lighten up

Urban “renewal”