Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
boat.
Nine different kinds of wood—beech, cherry, elm, fir, larch, lime, mahogany, oak, and
walnut—are shaped to form the distinctive boat designed to glide through shallow water.
The oak is the most critical, for the planks run the entire length of the boat (about thirty
feet). Originally, wood was delivered to Venetian boatyards by river from the Dolomite
Mountains in the northern part of the Veneto region. The wood was left to season, some-
times for years, before the gondola maker deemed it ready to use for boat construction.
WHERE TO SEE GONDOLAS BEING MADE
Today's remaining gondola makers and artisans in related trades cluster in
the quiet section of town known as Dorsoduro, with a few more scattered
across the other
sestieri
of Venice and its outlying islands. Visiting these
workshops is not the same as visiting a museum or even, let's say, a mask-
maker's shop or a glass-making factory, where you are much more likely to
leave with a souvenir. It is important to contact them in advance and be re-
spectful of the artisans' time and the important work they are doing to pre-
serve Venice's maritime history.
A gondola has no straight lines or edges. Its distinctive warped profile results from an
impressive fire-and-water process that involves shaping the boards with torches made of
marsh reeds set ablaze. Once the basic shape has been achieved, gondola makers reinforce
the craft by attaching longitudinal cap rails, then fore and aft decks made of mahogany and
larch. Finally, the boat is flipped bottom-up, and the keel is planked and varnished.
The majority of the hours in gondola-building go into the final stages: finishing the
elaborate trim-work, then preparing surfaces and applying multiple coats of varnish to
make the boat watertight. After some five hundred hours of labor, the boat slides down the
ramp of the
squero
and into the canal.
Gondola Fittings
Across the city, a cadre of specialized artisans—ironsmiths, upholsterers, and makers of
everything from oarlocks to hats—supplied their gondola-making colleagues with elabor-
ate passenger compartments (
felzi
), engraved prow and stern forks (
ferri
), row locks, oars,
upholstery, and other ornaments of steel and brass. Today, a handful of master craftsmen
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