let’s lighten 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
The Garden of the Forgotten Venetians – Riccardo Selvatico
This sylvan glade was created by Napoleon when he went through Venice like the Destroying Angel, razing and demolishing scores of churches, convents, scuole and other buildings that were inconsiderately sited where he wanted something else to be, or that happened to contain things he wanted such as gold, jewels and works of art.
Nowadays the Giardini Pubblici (Public Gardens) are best-known for accommodating the original pavilions of the art extravaganza known as the Biennale. Also, being a garden, the area is full of trees and flowers and shrubs, plus an attractive little playground. It even offers a useful amount of space to handle thousands of runners at the finish line of the Venice Marathon.
However, this 13-acre piece of Venice is more than a shrine for art lovers or a bosky dell for the relief of exhausted tourists. It is a garden of remembrance(s) of people and/or events of which hardly anybody remembers anything. That’s a wild guess on my part, based on the general nonchalance with which people wander through. Look at the bronze bust of Giorgio Emo Capodilista; it has “And now the weather report from Oblivion” written all over it. Not to mention Carlo de Ghega, another extremely worthy Venetian whose crumbling memorial plaque is only about 45 seconds away.
So I’ve decided — SEEING THAT THERE ARE NO HELPFUL EXPLANATORY SIGNS ANYWHERE, THE KIND THAT MANY TOWNS WHOSE CITIZENS AND OFFICIALS FEEL SOME CIVIC PRIDE OFTEN PLACE NEAR WORTHY LANDMARKS — to remedy this oversight. I’m limiting myself to the Gardens at the moment, because I intuit that trying to address the skillions of other personages “remembered” around Venice would be a life’s work. Not a reason not to do it, just a reason to evaluate it carefully.
But the Gardens are calling. May I present Riccardo Selvatico, our first example of departed glory:
Selvatico was born in Venice in 1849 and died in 1901. Trained as a lawyer, he was mayor of Venice from 1890-95. He was also a poet and writer of comedies (I guess politics could help you with that) written in the Venetian dialect. When he wasn’t scribbling he did a number of important things. For one, he established a fund to finance the construction of healthier housing, replacing swathes of dwellings which were worthy of New York’s Lower East Side or Rio’s favelas; he would have lived through several cholera epidemics, so he didn’t need anybody to explain the problems of slums.
And if that doesn’t seem especially herm-worthy, he was also the person who came up with the idea, approved by a city-council vote in 1894, of holding an international art exposition in Venice every two years. In other words, he invented the Biennale, which now runs for at least six months, and sometimes seven, every year. It brings glory to the participants and boatloads of money to the city — I have no way of knowing which aspect inspired him more. Maybe it was a draw. The opposition party, naturally, stigmatized it as yet another example of his administration’s tendency to waste money on projects of barely discernible utility, in order to favor its friends and clients.
So he wrote a little poem called “Metempsicosi” in which he imagines that if it were true that we can be reincarnated as some animal, he’d like to come back as a pigeon in the Piazza San Marco, watch the people, fly around, and poop on the hats of a couple of individuals he isn’t going to name.
His five years as mayor were busy, of course, partly due to an ongoing battle between his highly eclectic and non-religious government and the opposition party marshaled by Giuseppe Sarto, then patriarch of Venice but later Pope Pius X. In 1895 Sarto’s faction won the election and Selvatico was back on the street. Separation of church and state was not an important principle at the time.
Selvatico clearly accomplished more than your usual assortment of Bepis and Tonis (“Bepi”and “Toni” are the immemorial nicknames of the quintessential pair of Venetian friends, up to and including today). I’m glad his efforts were appreciated, though the encomiums came after his death, as usual.
I Recini da Festa (“The best earrings”) is a comedy in two acts set in Venice, first performed in Venice to great success at the Teatro Goldoni on April 4, 1876 (14 years before he became mayor, so people knew what they were getting into, so to speak, when they elected him). One critic calls this comedy as “light and intricate as a piece of Burano lace,” still a stellar example of the best of the theatre in Venetian dialect of the time. Then as now, everybody spoke Venetian, so it wasn’t necessarily seen as a quaint way of talking, or even typical of a particular social class.
A poverty-stricken young married couple — also, she’s pregnant — is living with her parents because the husband has been rejected by his rich father who was opposed to the wedding. This opposition is based on an old quarrel between the two fathers-in-law dating from their youth, about which the newlyweds know nothing. Her father can’t support them all, so his wife breaks the piggybank in which the money for the crib was being kept.
But the baby MUST have a crib so that the father can at least put up a good appearance, therefore the daughter (soon to be mother) decides to pawn her best earrings. The person who resolves all the twists is the big-hearted and astute midwife, who’s ready to make any sacrifice to settle the matter. In the end the two old enemies make peace, and the rich father himself gives the earrings back to his daughter-in-law. Happy ending for everybody!
One critic calls this little confection “fresh, simple, full of domestic intimacy, which even today one hears willingly.”
Perhaps even better-known (among Venetians) is his poem “Brindisi” (toast), written in honor of the Regata Storica of 1893, and read by Selvatico at the then-traditional dinner given for all the racers the Thursday evening before the big event on Sunday.
That year the festivities were grand — nine new gondolinos had been constructed, and six bissone were bedecked at a cost of 3000 lire ($15,678 adjusted value). The rockstar pair of rowers, the Zanellato brothers, weren’t competing, and that left three crews which were virtually equal. Emotions were high even before the wine began to flow.
Like most poetry, it’s infinitely better spoken than read in silence, and I can only imagine the exultation that greeted the last few verses. I will translate, knowing that things like this come out in translation as if they’d been soaked in bleach. The original is below.
There are some who tremble/Looking around/And seeing that the world/Keeps going along every day
It seems that Venice/Once so beautiful/A little at a time/She too has changed
Mincioni/Let me say it/Venice doesn’t change/No matter how much people shout (terms in italics explained below)
The calle de l’Oca/has gone to hell/But the Grand Canal/For Lord’s sake, who would touch it?
They’ve gone to hell/parties and gambling houses/Dances, country festivals/
The Forze di Ercole/the puppet shows
So fine– but there is always/our Regata/There is always the festa/That nothing can affect (literally “impact”)
Cape, wig/ hat shaped like a raviolo/They’re dead and buried/But there is still the boatman!
And as long as this breed/Of arms and lungs/Of men who are tressi/sbragioni but good
As long as this breed/I repeat, is like this/Venice doesn’t change/Venice is beautiful!
————————————————————-
Mincioni: Refers to the male member; I’ve tried and can’t confidently give an English equivalent in the sense intended here, which summarizes all the great qualities of men’s men, in a good sense, even while using a word which usually implies the opposite.
Forze di Ercole: These “strengths of Hercules” were complicated human pyramids, spectacular exhibitions of endurance and equilibrium put on during festive occasions such as Carnival.
Hat like a raviolo: Tricorn
Tressi: A person who is a “tresso” (here he is using the plural to characterize boatmen in general) is big, strong, burly, muscular. I can imagine this inspiring an enormous burst of laughter, table- and friend-pounding, general uproar. What’s even better is that “tresso” is also the piece of wood which strengthens and unites two things that without it would collapse — for example, the legs of a chair (technically known in English as the “stretcher”). Calling somebody a tresso suddenly seems like a great thing.
Sbragioni: People called “sbragioni” are those who tend to yell when talking, especially with the belief that yelling will make the shouter win the argument. More laughter.
This is only the first personage to be rediscovered in the Garden of the Forgotten Venetians. Next chapter coming soon.
“Brindisi” for the Regata Storica by Riccardo Selvatico 1893
Gh’è certi che trema
Vardandose a torno,
E visto ch’el mondo
Camina ogni zorno,
Ghe par che Venezia
Un dì cussì bela,
Un poco a la volta
Se cambia anca ela.
Mincioni, mincioni,
Lassè che lo diga;
Venezia no cambia
Per quanto che i ziga.
Xe andada in malora
La cale de l’Oca;
Ma el so Canalazzo,
Perdio, chi lo toca?
Xe andai in so malora
Festini e ridoti,
I salti, le sagre,
Le forze, i casoti:
Va ben, ma gh’è sempre
La nostra Regata,
Gh’è sempre la festa
Che gnente ghe impata.
Velada, paruca,
Capelo a rafiol
Xe morti e sepolti;
Ma gh’è el barcariol!
E fin che sta razza
De brazzi e polmoni,
De omeni tressi,
Sbragioni ma boni,
In fin che sta razza,
Ripeto, xe quela,
Venezia no cambia,
Venezia xe bela!
The fontegheto also has changed its look
While my mind is still loitering around the Giardini Reali, soon to be refurbished, titivated, and otherwise brought back to life (the Giardini, not my mind), I thought I’d show a glimpse of how the immediate area looked before Napoleon moved in and there went the neighborhood.
Between the early 1800’s and the 1930’s, the white stone bridge so gracefully arching over the canal didn’t exist, for the simple reason that Napoleon and those who followed wanted the Gardens (royal, remember?) to be appropriately separated from the rest of the city on that side.
Slightly further back in history, there once was a perfectly serviceable bridge, and without parapets or steps, which was more the norm than not. It led to that now-closed archway, which then was a perfectly serviceable passageway (sotoportego) that went through the Fontegheto de la Farina.
Regrowing a garden
Aerial views of Venice reveal an unsuspected abundance of gardens and parks, which aren’t always apparent to the wanderer of the brick- and stone-walled streets. But one garden cum park is so obvious that I wonder how many people are even aware of it. Those who are, though, have long been disappointed, and like so many things that ought to be done but somehow aren’t, the Giardini Reali stretching between the Piazza San Marco and the lagoon have spent years in quiet, despairing decline.
Once or twice a year, an article would appear in the Gazzettino urging the campers and backpackers and picnickers who bivouac in the Piazza to avail themselves of the green space — with benches, even! — where they could munch and relax. But either the message didn’t get across, or many people looked through the rusty gate at the dusty, gravelly area which once was a garden and now had more of the atmosphere of an abandoned parking lot in Buffalo and had second thoughts. Dust in the summer you can sort of put up with, but a mid-day garden which affords NO SHADE is very hard to make appealing.
In any case, tell the truth: Did you have any idea there was a garden there?
But I’m here with good news: The garden is coming back, with flowers and a fountain and SHADE. At least those are the glad tidings announced at a press conference last Friday by the Venice Gardens Foundation (which is new — you haven’t somehow missed it, but its website will compel you to brush up on your Italian), an ambitious undertaking launched with lavish funding from the Generali Insurance Company.
The “Royal Gardens” (your first hint that they do not date from the days of the non-royal doges) were created by the wish of Napoleon in 1806 according to a design by Giovanni Antonio Antolini. When he wasn’t razing and demolishing swathes of Venice, Napoleon was transforming them. No sooner had he turned the Procuratie Nuove into the Royal Palace than he commissioned an adjoining garden, because as we all know, a palace must have a garden. Just look at Versailles. Napoleon may have been all about egalite’, but only up to a point.
So a garden was decreed and so it was, and so it continued under the Austrian occupiers and on into the epoch of the Republic of Italy, when I suppose the nervous sensation that no ghe xe schei to maintain it began to be felt.
Now we’re here and the garden will bloom again, in the form of a return to the classic design (with a few modifications) by Paolo Pejrone, one of the most celebrated landscape architects in Italy, if not the world. Meanwhile, architect Alberto Tosello will restore and re-pristinate, as the fabulous Italian verb comes out, the suffering buildings of the Padiglione Santi (another architect, not a batch of saints) — a small classic temple often identified as Palazzina Selva — the hothouse, and the sadly decrepit pergola. And the disconsolate rusty gates. Not to mention the long since seized-up old metal drawbridge.
Here is how Paolo Pejrone describes how his work will look (translated by me): “…one can imagine a garden of abundance and coolness, rich and luxurious…On the whole it won’t be a flower garden, except for the wisteria and trumpet vines, the agapanthus, some clerodendrum and hydrangeas; all suffused with a light spirit, with colorful and sometimes perfumed intervals in an elaborate and yet simple garden of leaves… It will be a triumph of leafy green, a play of transparency and shadows: every kind of leaf, thin and ribbon-like, supple and broad, glossy, leathery, or fluffy and opaque. The Gardens will proudly overbrim in every moment of the year…” It sounds divine, especially the part about the SHADOWS. It practically sounds like a stretch of the Amazon lowlands.
All this should be ready for the pleasure of everybody in the second half of 2018. Perhaps just in time for the first snowfall, but no matter. It will be beautiful again, that’s the point. And if tourists keep deciding anyway to fire up their camp stoves to cook lunch in the Piazza San Marco (not made up), or sprawl across the steps near the Caffe Florian to gnaw their sandwiches instead of reposing briefly in what should be a delectable little nook of leafy green, it certainly won’t be anybody’s fault but their own.
