Gondola Bacino Orseolo

Getting here you have probably crossed the Grand Canal at least once using one of the four existing bridges. But when Théophile Gautier was here in 1850 – there was only one – the Rialto bridge that you are going to cross later on our walk. The only other way to cross to the other side was on a gondola – and the iconic gondoliers were here more out of necessity than for entertainment.

Gautier wrote: The gondoliers seated on a marble step or on the poop of their gondolas… eat shell-fish, drink Friulian wine, and sup gaily by the light of the stars and the little lamps at the street corners lighted in front of the niches of the Madonnas.

Now they are busy entertaining tourists – and many tourists (and quite a few writers among them) came here and stayed for them. Frederick Rolfe, known as Baron Corvo, famously enjoyed their company. The brit rowed himself and wrote quite a few stories featuring the iconic boatmen. But he was certainly not the last and not the first. Another famous poet, John Addington Symonds, came to Venice almost 50 years prior. For him the gondolier and the city are as inseparable as the gondolier and his gondola.

So join them! Grab an aperetivo and some cicchetti in a neighboring bar and go and find a marble step to enjoy it while looking at the blue waters of the Venetian channels.