You think Venice is just museums and restaurants? This particular moment will show that you can be in Venice without doing any of the things you typically expected to do, at least in the heart of darkest Castello. Sumer is definitely icumen in.
Potluck dinner tonight in Seco Marina.
Not being sarcastic, I think that is absolutely adorable, because extending the invitation to foreigners (just for starters) especially in the local language, is the essence of welcome. Also not being sarcastic, maybe it’s a cleverly calculated risk, because I’m not sure how many foreigners speak Venetian.
A Venetian I know, working on the assumption that some foreigners would understand this invitation anyhow, also assumes that said foreigners would bring next to nothing to the table but a large desire to eat free food. I’m not going to be there to confirm or deny this, but the notion that at least one foreigner might interpret the invitation in this way does give an regrettable indication of how some foreigners have led at least one Venetian to imagine something so unpleasant. This foreigner (me) unhappily believes that the aforementioned Venetian may well not be wrong.
While we’re on the subject of Friday evening, you could wander over to the Campo San Lorenzo and enjoy an evening organized by “Art Night Venice.” (Please note the Comune’s commitment to serving its tourists by organizing or sponsoring all these events on June 22 by promoting it on their website whose English-language option does not translate into English. You might chance your arm by using Google Translate, if you care.) There are scores — they say “hundreds” — of free events that night. Here’s an English-language rundown.
San Lorenzo is a bit out of my circuit even though it’s not far. You could be there in ten minutes or even fewer from via Garibaldi.
Then there is the annual five-day festa of San Piero di Casteo June 26-30. Every year thousands of revelers come to revel till midnight or so to live music and equally live mosquitoes (bring your strongest repellent). When the music ends and the food stands close, everybody all reveled out wanders homeward along the street outside our bedroom window. We are at street level. The windows are open because we are sweltering. So we get to hear everybody’s chaotic closing remarks till 1:00 AM or so.
And let us not forget that the Biennale is still in full swing. Last Wednesday morning about 4,936 kids (by my estimate) from Campalto, a village up on the way to the airport, were coming to see it. They were excited, which is nice. But 4,936 excited kids on the 5.1 vaporetto from the Zattere was not at all nice. I closed my eyes all the way back, trying not to imagine those doomed ferries in southeast Asia that go down because they are so groaningly overloaded. I asked Lino if we were going to start seeing people riding atop the vaporettos, like trains in India. He didn’t reply. I did not take that as a “no.”
But the true drama underway in the neighborhood — speaking of entertainment, which I guess we were — is the gobsmackingly ponderous Coldiretti Villaggio that has been under construction for a week and will continue to be under construction till it opens on June 28 for three gobsmacking days. I couldn’t find anything in English about this phenomenon but click on the link to see a brief video from the same undertaking a few months ago at Naples.
This event is of dimensions so extreme and gnarly that it needs its own post. Meanwhile, as I struggle to write it, may I suggest that you pause to evaluate the theoretical value/importance/necessity/desirability of awakening Venetians (I think the three days are intended to awaken people) to the problems of farmers and raisers of livestock by bringing the farmers and livestock straight into the heart of a desperately fragile World Heritage Site that is already known to be staggering under the weight of human hordes.
And on that note (I think it’s a G-flat), let the summer begin.
Reader Christopher has written the following Comment: I am perplexed and maybe you can help me. The Chiesa di Sant’Elena was built in as early as 1060 by some accounts. Saint Helen was brought to the lagoon and interred in her eponymous church in 1211. It’s curious that the church is not shown on the earlier maps. Any idea why this might be? ….
If I understand your question to be why isn’t the church dedicated to Sant’ Elena shown on maps prior to the arrival of her remains, I can only reply that I think there could be several reasons.
One reason is that there aren’t many maps of Venice prior to 1211, and those that do exist are not very detailed. Even 17th-century maps don’t show everything. Also, Venice has plenty of churches named for saints whose remains are not in residence. There’s no reason why a mapmaker with limited space would choose to show a church if it didn’t contain its tutelary saint. Which raises the interesting question, which I had never considered till now, as to who decides what to include in a map and what to leave out.
As to the dates you mention, “…the first chapel dedicated to St. Helen was built in 1028 and entrusted to the Augustinian order, which constructed also a convent. In 1211 the Augustinian monk Aicardo brought to Venice from Constantinople the presumed body of the empress. Following which the Augustinians enclosed the chapel within a larger church.” More confusion arises from the statement that there was a “hospital” dedicated to her, built in 1175 — 36 years before the saint arrived — maintained by the Augustinian order, for the care of the poor.
In the 15th century the convent and the church passed to the Benedictine monks, who rebuilt it in 1439. A century later, in 1515, the church was consecrated by the bishop of Aleppo and became an important religious center, with vast property and notable works of art. So evidently three centuries, all told, had to pass before her church (or let’s just say “she”) became sufficiently important to warrant identified inclusion on a map.
These sources don’t identify where the church was located, but I’m going to suppose it was on the island of Sant’ Elena.
Some maps, from the 1400’s onward, show at least part of an island floating off the eastern shore of Castello, just below Olivolo, where the church of San Pietro di Castello stands. So something was there, even if it isn’t identified. Yet if her eponymous original church was there, it does seem strange that so many cartographers didn’t show it, or if they did, why they didn’t always label it.
I think it’s evident that no map except Dei’ Barbari’s (1500) could claim to show everything. A good number of maps show only a smattering of churches, even though we know that there were many more. But he gives a only glimpse of the island, going so far as to cover half of it with a cloud-bedecked cherub. And yet the island, not to mention the mother of the Emperor Constantine, were hardly a secret.
If I ever find out why she was snubbed so often, I’ll let you know.
A few days ago this simple notice was stuck on the glass of the front door of the Trattoria alla Rampa del Piave. That’s the exactly joint three steps from the fruit and vegetable boat and, more to the point, is by the balustrade where Sandro Nardo would sell his fish.
He was no amateur just out making a little extra money — I don’t know that he had any other source of income. In any case, he was always out, night and/or day, depending on whatever conditions were most favorable for a reasonable haul.
And then he’d weigh and bag whatever he’d caught, and in the late morning he would come and pile the bags on the balustrade. He wasn’t there every day; it seemed kind of random. Monday was often a good day to find him, as the fish shop is closed on Mondays. And the balustrade was a prime spot, being at a sort of crossroads as well as a point where the street narrows dramatically. It slows people down enough to give them time to glance, at least, at what he had caught.
We didn’t often buy from him — his prices were no bargain — but we rarely resisted when he had seppie because it’s not easy to find them fresh.
We went to his funeral at the church of San Pietro di Castello. It’s a big place, but it was crammed; I’m sure the entire neighborhood must have been there. This was impressive, though not entirely surprising.
What truly surprised me was Nicola (probably not his real name, but the one he goes by). He’s a wiry, gristly bantamweight Romanian man who showed up in the neighborhood some years ago. At first he seemed to be just an anonymous mendicant who had installed himself between the fish shop and the vegetable boat. Tourists passing — there used to be lots, all aiming for the Biennale — would make their contributions.
Then gradually he wove himself into the neighborhood net, doing odd jobs, mopping boats, helping with the loading and unloading of the fruit/vegetable boat, and so on. By now everyone calls him by name, and he reciprocates.
But now we’re all at the funeral. The service is over, and the casket is being wheeled out to the canal where the hearse is waiting, rolling along a paved walkway lined with everybody from within the radius of a mile. Nicola is standing near us, all by himself, clutching his baseball cap, and he looks stricken. I have no idea what his interactions with Sandro ever were, but they must have been important because he is weeping. A lot of people are sad, but he seems to be the only person in tears.
Having nothing else, he wipes his eyes with his baseball cap.
You couldn’t make a memorial plaque big enough to match that.
Last Sunday was an unusually entertaining day. It wasn’t as entertaining as the last Sunday of June typically is, coming at the culmination of five days of festivizing at San Pietro di Castello in honor of the church’s namesake. But by the time the day was over there had been more diversion than I’d expected.
Let’s start with the festa for Saint Peter. This year — you know what’s coming — The Virus made it impossible to host the usual large and lively crowds, or execute the expected entertainment and the feeding of at least five thousand. (Yes, bread and fish are always on the menu, among other things.)
But nobody said we couldn’t have the festal mass, complete with the Patriarch of Venice on his annual visit. Chairs were set up outside in the campo, correctly distanced, and although the usual supporting players were few (a couple of selected Scouts instead of a whole troop, four trumpeters instead of the band from Sant’ Erasmo), or even non-existent (no Cavalieri di San Marco in their sweeping mantles — soooo hot but sooooo well worth it, I’m sure they believe), there was a fine gathering of the faithful.
And may I say that seeing each other without being separated by layers of tourists has been, and continues to be, a noticeably positive aspect of the quarantine and aftermath. More about that another time. But back to the service.
As the Patriarch pointed out in his sermon, the religious aspect is the one essential element of the occasion. He didn’t specifically say “Don’t feel mournful because there were no barbecued ribs and polenta and live music and horsing around for hours with your friends and the mosquitoes,” though I’m sure he knew that’s what people were missing. At least they came for him.
To review: This was the traditional festa:
Sunday afternoon it was time to segue from the sublime to the secular. Every year, on the last Sunday in June, the city of Venice organizes two races in honor of Saints Giovanni and Paolo. The reason it isn’t called the race of Saint Peter is because it is held in the water between Murano and the Fondamente Nove, and the finish line is in front of the hospital, which is on the campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo.
The first race involves pairs of men on a boat called a pupparino; the second race is for young men up to age 25, rowing solo on gondolas. Sound simple? Of course it is, as long as everything goes well.
But sometimes it doesn’t…..
The men on pupparinos go first, and go they certainly did. I’m usually watching from the shore, but this time I was able to follow the race on a friend’s motorboat.
If anyone is interested, here are the results of the race of the men on pupparinos, from first to last: Orange, green, pink, white, brown, blue, purple, red. (Yellow withdrew, obviously.)
As for the race of the young men on gondolas, I have no strength left to report on it or anything else. Happily, there is nothing noteworthy to report. It seems that the day’s double-ration of drama was expended completely on the first race.