Venice: The Meeting of East and West - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 77

there is still only one Venice. And near the top of the reasons for its singular status is its
history, or more precisely, the many roles played by Venice over the centuries. The city has
dazzled visitors through the centuries. And to experience Venice through a gifted writer,
one should visit Jan Morris' Venice , acclaimed by many as the finest book on the city. [74]
Morris explores, explains and quite simply appreciates Venice through its people, its lagoon
and the city itself. As we shall see, Venice's story, at the crossroads between East and West,
is like no other.
The symbol of modern Venice is, of course, the gondola. The word has enjoyed (or
endured) curious uses in days gone by: an open top railroad car to carry coal, wheat, or
cement; a pod suspended beneath a blimp; open display shelves in the supermarket; and
thick-hulled submersible globes used to explore deep oceans. But these words are curios-
ities. The gondola we all know is the graceful, high-prowled boat, rowed while standing
upright, the personal transport of Venice. The Venetian gondola has a round bottom, mak-
ing for easy maneuvering, useful in crowded canals. It sits low in the water, rising grace-
fully fore and aft, prow (sometimes the stern) clad in iron. The stern is small. The prow
curves and rises high as the weight of its iron, ferro , helps to balance the gondolier standing
off-side at the stern. The ferro is ornamented with fretwork, occasionally with spikes. The
gondolier's platform (the forcola ) extends outward from the side of the gondola, giving
the boat a distinctive asymmetrical bulge. The forcola is no simple platform. Curves of its
surface give the gondolier a variety of footholds with which to maneuver the boat in busy
traffic.