C. Arriving by Water

Historically, the main form of transport in Venice was by boat. In the sixteenth century, there were an estimated 10,000 gondolas plying the canals, along with a multitude of various other boats, all adapted to the unusual conditions pertaining in the city. [1] Travel in Venice had originally been strictly by water. In the earlier years of settlement, before bridges, boats were the only means of communication:

Canals were, then, the single means of communication, the boat the only means of uniting island with island. . . . A document from 1180, referring to the earliest inhabitants of the lagoon, said that "when they wished to go to church, they went by the canal, as there was no other way of going." [2]

Many houses, fronting right onto one or more canals, enclosed a peculiar architectural feature: the private water entrance. Houses located on canals had a long hall on the piano terra that opened directly onto the canal. In order to deal with the fluctuating water levels induced by tidal action, the interface between house (land) and water was broken into a flight of steps, running from the house down into the water. A boat would arrive and be moored next to the steps, and the occupants would disembark onto the first dry step. The meeting between land and water was thus both permanent and flexible. [3] For privacy and security, the water entrances were closed by doors. On lesser canals, these doors were generally flush with the house walls, but on the Grand Canal, they frequently were recessed into the house, so that the entrance formed a loggia, or portal. The overall impression was of a house with a front door at the top of a short wide flight of steps that disappeared into a watery street.

Not all houses bordered directly on canals. Residents of houses surrounded entirely by land had many of the same transport needs as their friends and relations in houses on canals. In order to facilitate public inter-island travel by boat, public water stairs were also built. They functioned in the same way as house-bound stairs, with their upper termini not inside houses, but at the edges of fondamente, thus connecting the street and bridge transport system with the marine one. This connection was underlined by the frequent placement of water steps directly next to bridges. The reason for this was undoubtedly the fact that bridges took advantage of open space at the edge of a canal, as did public water stairs.

Embarkation into or disembarkation from a boat could be a profoundly liminal experience. [4] The act of stepping into or out of a boat is one in which the participant is at risk, in danger of losing his balance and falling into the water. Before taking that step, there must be a preparation; during the transfer, the passenger must concentrate on physical placement; after the transfer is completed, there must be an adjustment to the new situation. If the passenger has moved to the water from land, he must adjust to a freer form of movement as the boat bobs up and down in the water. Landing also requires a physical adjustment; the well-known phenomenon of loss of balance on land after a spell on the water takes hold, if only for a few minutes or seconds. The Venetian use of architectural features such as gates combined with the private water stairs to add to the sensation of passage. In order to enter the water, or to come ashore at a private house, the traveler had to pass through a portal, a doorway not only between inside and outside, but also between two radically different realms of motion and sensation.

Some households not situated on canals owned boats, but many were boatless. For them, or for members or servants of boat-owning houses who for one reason or other did not have boat access at a particular time, land transport was the usual means. There was, however, one exception: the Grand Canal was sufficiently wide, sufficiently long, and so inadequately bridged (the Rialto Bridge was the only bridge across the Grand Canal until the 19th century) that, particularly given the general prominence of businesses and residences located on it, additional means of crossing it had to be found for those so unfortunate as to be without boats. The traghetti, or public boat crossings, filled the gap. Gondole, operating from specified boat landings, worked as ferries, generally going directly across the Grand Canal at thirteen paired landing spots, for a small fee. [5]

Gondolas were also used as an element of status or display. It is a maxim of historians that sumptuary laws define low-water marks of display that are best considered as ideals of austerity; actual behavior is usually much more indicative of conspicuous consumption when such laws are promulgated. In 1552, all gondolas were required to be painted black. [6] The implication is that before that time, gondolas were riotous in color and were overloaded with gilding and trim, suggesting that they were a status symbol on a par with present-day vans with custom paint jobs. [7] Other boats would have undergone similar, if not necessarily as elaborate, decoration. Owners of gondolas employed gondoliers to row them; large households would have more than one such boatman, and some particularly wealthy families, instead of sharing the services of these servants, might have one gondolier assigned full-time to a particular member of the family, as a personal servant. [8]

The status attached to gondola ownership was such that no elite household could afford not to have one; for one thing, attendance at the Maggior Consiglio, every Sunday, required arrival and departure in gondolas. This posed certain traffic problems; the gondolieri, who were obliged to wait for their masters until the council session was over, tended to collect around the quays and mooring posts, blocking later-arriving traffic with an ever-increasing knot of boats. This, and the normal rivalries between gondolieri, were seen as threats to public order--so much so that in 1541, the set of laws enacted to govern the behavior of boatmen required these gondole to wait elsewhere so as not to block traffic and create a nuisance. [9]