E. Traveling by Land

Land transport in Venice has both a negative and a positive identity. In one sense, it is transport that is not by water. Viewed another way, it is travel both by land in the literal sense and by bridge--use of a network separate from the watery one.

The structure of Venice ensures that its land transport network is different from those in other cities, both physically and perceptually. Physically, the fact that the land network must cross over the water system, using bridges, requires certain modifications to ordinary travel by land. Large loads going long distances are difficult to move. In most towns, the greatest normal barrier to transport might be a rather steep hill; in Venice there are constant obstacles to land traffic: bridges, the very features that also make such transport possible at all. The section on bridges described several forms of bridge--flat wood, ramped or arched wood, and stone. All of these pose certain problems for porters or animal teams; the only varieties that do not are flat wooden bridges with ramp access, and bridges made up of two or more ramps, joined in the middle. Even in these, the slope of the ramps may be too steep to accommodate very large or heavy loads.

Bridges with steps work best with small loads, as the large wheels required for loads of greater size will not find a purchase unless the steps are sufficiently wide, a situation not always attainable over a narrow span which must also rise several feet into the air in order to leave room for the boat traffic passing below. The result is that, with the rise of stepped bridges in preference to flat or ramped constructions, heavy loads to be transported from one island to another very likely went by boat as a matter of necessity, custom and convenience. Stepped bridges meant that traffic on land, between islands, was at least partially limited to persons traveling without burdens. Traffic on any given island was limited only by the width (and occasionally height) of the passageways on the island. To a person unencumbered by luggage or business goods, it was (and still remains) perfectly possible to traverse the entire city on foot, or to walk part of the way and take a boat the rest of the distance. [1] Goods transport generally was accomplished by taking the load to the nearest water stairs, private or public, loading a boat, and then rowing the boat to the landing nearest the destination. The cargo would then be unloaded, either directly into a building on a canal, or up public water stairs for transport the rest of the way by land. Foot traffic in Venice thus acquired a certain non-work-related quality.

The change during the Quattrocento and Cinquecento from parity between wooden and stone bridges to domination by the stone ones was related to a shift in traffic patterns. While the replacement of a wooden bridge by a stone one generally implied an increase in traffic, as discussed in the previous section on bridges, it also caused a shift in the nature of that traffic. Once a wooden bridge had been converted to a stone bridge, or to a stepped wooden bridge, the use of animals over it, already not a principal means of transport, became even less common. [2] Most wheeled traffic over bridges was downgraded to small handcarts to be pulled up the bridge and pushed or eased down the other side. In order to handle the goods traffic that increased with the expanding economy and population, large-scale transport of any supplies that might have formerly moved on land and over bridges now had to take to the water, so that a reinforcement of the water-transport mentality was the paradoxical accompaniment of the increase in bridges. Meanwhile, pedestrian traffic over the bridges was on the increase, as the city became more filled in, with more people on the move, and as large single loads were broken up into multiple smaller ones, each with a person to move it.

Perceptually and kinesthetically, travel by land differed from travel by water in the abstract narrative of its journey. By land, a pedestrian left a house, stayed on his feet the entire time, and ended up at another building. In between, his journey was punctuated by numerous changes in height, almost always triggered by crossing bridges. Each of these crossings was also a narrative: ascend the bridge, walk across the arched top while suspended in space, and then descend the other side of the bridge. Such pedestrian journeys were therefore interrupted by a large number of brief liminal experiences in which the traveler, while remaining in the land travel network, walked out into space and crossed a threshold--the canal--to the other side. This contrasted with the narrative of water travel, in which the traveler underwent complex liminal experiences at the beginning and end of his journey, as he exited a building and entered a boat, and later left the boat and entered a building, existing, in the interim, in a profound but passive liminal state as he was transported around the water-based network, a state that underwent periodic intensification as his boat passed under bridges. [3]

Land traffic, of course, was not limited to bridges. Bridges were merely the punctuation in an extensive network of streets and alleys. Local writers took the streets for granted, and most travellers were so overwhelmed by the marine side of the city that they spent little or no time discussing the streets, but Thomas Coryat was an exception. To be sure, he began his discussion with bridges, noting that "Each street hath many severall bridges," but then went on to discuss "land streets," denoting an obvious equation in his mind of canals to "water streets."

Almost every channell . . . hath his land street joyning to it, which is fairely pitched or paved with bricke, and of so convenient a breadth some few of them are, that five or sixe persons may walke together there side by side, and some are so narrow, that but two can walke together, in some but one. Also in many places those land streetes are in both sides of the channell, in some in one side onely, in some few in neither. Moreover there are other little streetes called Calli, which we may more properly call land streets than the other, because they are in the maine land of the Islands farre from the channels. These also are paved with bricke as the others are: but many of them are much narrower than those by the channels. [4]

The lack of maintenance of footpaths up through the twelfth century strongly suggests an interest in the water system at the expense of a pedestrian traffic flow that was deemed negligible or, at best, of lesser importance. However, the intensity of the building and infill activity of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries meant that new construction could no longer be guaranteed a canal-side location with water access. It followed that other access became not only required but privileged. [5] By the second half of the Duegento, pedestrian travel became an independent system in its own right, not incidentally fuelling the documented increase, at an almost exponential rate, in bridges. [6] It was during these years that the intricate network of calli, salizzade, rami, and rughe was firmly established, but the expansion was not limited to various forms of streets. There were a number of private courtyards scattered across Venice, with a particularly high concentration in the San Giovanni Crisostomo area, and it was here that in the fourteenth century many of the private courtyards were first converted into public campielli, connected by sottoporteghi. [7]

Although in general the streets seemed to be taken for granted, it was still possible to improve the pedestrian traffic system at the same time that boat traffic remained in the ascendant. In the fourteenth century, as part of the further development of the Rialto area, a number of amenities were put into place, including stone steps and a merchants' loggia with benches, later to be supplemented by a large clock, at the Beccaria. Other amenities that benefited merchants as well as pedestrians generally included the development of botteghe, or street-side shops. [8] Such innovations worked together with the increase in bridges to make the alternative to canal traffic not only possible but in some circumstances preferable.