Click on the picture to see a larger version.
The gondola of the first class. Photo by Gribayedoff.

Traditionally gondolas are painted black but even in 1906 there were people who took delight in defying tradition: Thompson writes of meeting with a bright red gondola. By July, 2006 things had gotten so far out of hand that the Gondoliers Association and the Venice city council jointly issued guidelines prohibiting "plush multicoloured cushions, garish rugs, phosphorescent paint, fairy lights and other 'tacky and tasteless' decoration and ornamentation" on gondolas. "This is Venice, not Las Vegas," said Association head Roberto Luppi.

Source:
Outing magazine, vol. LI no. 6, March, 1908, p. 659.

Vance Thompson's Cab Drivers / 54

The Gondolier of Venice / 15

My gondola was one of ten that followed old Paolo's funeral barge – with big flaring candles of tallow in the standards – to the cemetery. Under the bridge of Paradise and on; out of the Rio di Santa Maria into the Rio dei Mendicanti – a street of dirty windows aflutter with rags (the multicolored livery of poverty) and frowned over by a civic beggars' rest; out into the Dead Lagoon and to the sight of the dome of San Michele and the rose-and-cream-colored walls of the cemetery.

This is the end of the gondolier, though Giuseppe, who is a good Catholic, assures me it is not the end of it altogether. The Pope, too, and many others are of his opinion.

The end of the gondolier's working-day is marked by thedisparicchiare.The boat is brought up to thetraghettoor to its station near his home and stripped of everything it contains – the brass horses and hands, the cushions, seats, backs of the seats, the carpets and chairs, even the old sponges; for the water thieves of Venice are adroit and tireless. The empty hull is left to swing with the tide.

"A rivederci, Giuseppe!"

"A rivederci, Signore!"

And so be it.

[The End]