Yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon the Piazza San Marco was bubbling with tourists. The sun was out, the air was warm, the most beautiful city in the world (so-called) was just lounging around being beautiful, etc. There were thousands (probably) of tourists, and an inexact number of thieves and pickpockets in the mix. So far, so normal.
One of the tourists was a man identified only as being South American. One of the pickpockets was originally from Tunisia, and around 4:00 PM they were destined to meet. The Tunisian was already known for his propensity to steal from shops, but yesterday he tried his hand at stealing from people. The aforementioned hand had already extracted the tourist’s wallet, as I understand it, but the victim felt it, ran after and caught him, and launched his fist at the thief’s nose. Broke it, in fact.
Wallet recovered, pickpocket carried away in an ambulance to await surgery.
Lessons learned? Don’t try to steal wallets if you’re only used to ransacking rooms. Rooms don’t hit back.
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.
Some things deserve to be laughed at — laughter with a frisson of incredulity. Incredulity without the guffaws also works well. And Florian closing in protest is hilarious.
Florian is the jewel in the crown of the Piazza San Marco. Opened on December 29, 1720, it is certainly the oldest cafe extant in Venice, and in all of Italy; some sources claim it’s the oldest in the world, though Florian modestly denies it. It’s also extremely beautiful. History and elegance make such a lovely couple. Sipping your prosecco or Bellini or even a tiny cup containing three drops of espresso, a nibble of salmon, a delectable pastry, all brought to you on a silver salver, you can feel wonderfully, uniquely glamorous. Sitting in Venice! At Florian! Am I dreaming? Is this really me?
Then the bill arrives, and you have to start planning that second mortgage on your house. Coffee at the bar: 3 euros ($3.17). Seated: 6.50 ($6.85). A little plate of six (6) cookies? 13 euros ($13.71). Is the atmosphere adorned by the enchanting music rippling from the instruments of the quartet on their platform outside? Your conto will request your payment of 6 euros per person, even if you didn’t actually order it. Yes, for a concert it’s extremely economical.
I could go on, but my point is not how expensive it is; Florian can charge any price it wants and nobody is forcing you to go there.
My point is that they closed for a day to protest the “invasion” of the gargantuan stage set up for massive ceremonies in the Piazza San Marco. (More on the ceremonies later.) Florian strongly objects to all this construction encroaching on their territory, primarily because they were not consulted weeks in advance. The city government disputes the accusation of no consultation.
I could understand somebody protesting a situation that would dangerously and cruelly limit, if not eliminate, their income for a few days (April 29 – May 9, to be precise). But I don’t believe this is the case.
They complain that there is too much going on in the Piazza, and huge events such as Wednesday’s graduation ceremony for 800 students of the University of Venice, and the even huger rituals planned for today in honor of the Morosini naval school (details follow), are seriously invading their physical space and even their aura.
The occasion is the 60th anniversary of the school’s re-founding in 1961 (originally established in 1937, but interruptions such as war ensued). And while we’re all together, why not also conduct the requisite swearing-in ceremony by which the first-year class is rendered officially military. This year the second-year group will join in, as there was no oath-taking last year. There will be marching and saluting executed by the 150 cadets, undoubtedly abetted by detachments from other military branches. Did I mention that the president of the republic will also be there? Not to mention many past cadets, going back decades.
To return to the bur under Florian’s saddle, yes, there is an enormous reviewing stand, and yes, there will be big bleachers flanking it. It’s regrettable that these will degrade the scenery of the Piazza, to the detriment of the Florian fascination. But it occurs to me that even though this legendary cafe’, like all businesses that place tables outdoors, pays a tax for the public space they occupy, they don’t actually own that space. Which is to say that the Piazza San Marco doesn’t belong to them. In fact, you could make a good argument that Florian’s appeal does not lie principally in the Piazza, but in its own glorious rooms. If you take the Orient Express, are you really going to spend a lot of time looking out the window at the scenery?
In any case, the Piazza San Marco has been the site of mass confusionary events for centuries. The interminable procession on the feast of Corpus Domini, the week-long market for the feast of the Ascension — stalls everywhere selling everything! — bear-baiting to entertain the Crown Prince of Russia in a Piazza surrounded by yes, bleachers filled with thousands of spectators, and so on. If anything big is going to happen in Venice, it’s almost certainly going to happen in the Piazza San Marco. Did nobody think to tell Florian?
Well, not according to them. They say they got barely 24-hours notice before the scaffolding began to go up, at which I wonder what difference it would have made to have had even 240-hours notice. The scaffolding is going up, and it will be coming down. See: “Ownership of Piazza,” above.
So here is what strikes me as hilarious about all this: What possible difference does it make to anyone except Florian if it closes for a day? I understand the desire to protest, but saying you’re going to close for a day to show how mad you are is kind of like when I was three years old and threatened to hold my breath forever if I didn’t get what I wanted. My mother basically said “Go right ahead,” and I did, and when I regained consciousness on the kitchen floor she was still standing over there, washing dishes or cutting vegetables or whatever she was doing. So much for my protest.
So a day without Florian, even though you can make it sound like something terrible, doesn’t even register on the Apocalypt-o-Meter. I think most of us can say we have other things to worry about.
I’m not going to lie: I never thought I’d see this day. Either it would never come, or by the time it did, I’d have long since turned into tera de bocal (clay for making chamberpots, as they put it here). But here we are, or more specifically, there it was this morning — the Adriatic to the right, the lagoon 70 cm lower to the left, and the vaunted MOSE floodgates ensuring for the first time that the twain shall never meet.
Years, decades, lifetimes have been devoted to constructing (and paying for) this thing, and I had little (in ErlaSpeak that means “no”) expectation that the gates would ever function. But they did. Allow me to doff my chapeau and say I’m not only astounded, but slightly weirded out. Because hearing three signals on the warning siren at 8:00 AM put all my nerves on high alert, even though we’re not in danger till four signals warn us of the possibility of the tide’s exceeding our personal domestic ground-level safe limit of 150 cm. Instead: Nothing.
I think everybody’s nerves have been a little tense, after two days of forecasts predicting an acqua alta to peak today at 135 cm above mean sea level at 12:05 PM. But at 9:00 AM (and at a mere 70 cm of rising tide) it was instead the long-discussed, -doubted, -reviled floodgates that rose, and stopped the sea at whatever the watery analogy of “in its tracks” may be. At the measuring station at the Diga Sud of the Lido the tide was at 119 cm, but the water at the Punta della Salute — bacino of San Marco, basically — was at 69 cm. When the tide turned, just after noon, it had reached 129 cm, but in the city was only a paltry 73.
We went outside to look at our canal. The water wasn’t moving. A lost pear, fallen from the fruit/vegetable boat upstream, was bobbing tranquilly in one place when it ought long since to have been carried off by the rising (or, by then, falling) tide.
Even on a normal day, the water in the canal is almost always moving at some speed, in some direction; only briefly, twice a month, does the tide pause in what is called the morte de aqua (“death of the water”). But here it was, stock still. It might as well have been in the bathtub. And so it remained until some time after the Adriatic began to withdraw; I suppose that didn’t need to be said, but perhaps someone other than myself might have forgotten that you wouldn’t lower the barrier until the sea was at least even with the level of water in the lagoon.
I didn’t used to think of 135 cm as anything more than “God, this is annoying.” But I think it’s fair to say that the doomsday inundation of November 11-12, 2019 is still too screamingly fresh in everybody’s mind to allow the casual return of “Sure, this is Venice, what do you expect?” Any tide above normal now appears potentially apocalyptic. And if our nerves were slightly on edge, so were those of the hopeful travelers who had booked hotel rooms and then, having heard early mentions of the dreaded words “acqua alta,” quickly canceled the reservations.
That’s too bad, because they missed a verifiably historic moment. And I’m glad I was here to see that pear not going anywhere in our canal.
The breakwater at San Nicolo’ on the Lido was an excellent spot for watching this epic event. This clip gives a sense of the force of the wind, always a crucial player on Team Flood Venice. This morning it was up to 41 kph (25 mph).
In case the still photograph above doesn’t convey the dynamic of what’s happening, this video from Corriere della Sera (particularly at the beginning and end of the clip) gives a glimpse of the force of the tide, as seen against the barriers as they rise, one by one. Fun fact: It took one hour and 17 minutes to raise all 78 of the gates, so the process obviously needs to start in a timely manner and not wait till the last OMG minute.
Note: Two videos, and all of the images with the exception of the water in the Piazza San Marco, were forwarded to me by friends via WhatsApp, so I am unable to give appropriate credit to their sources.