'It's like loading bombs' – Venice reduces gondola capacity due to overweight tourists
The maximum number of passengers permitted on Venice’s famed gondolas is being reduced from six to five – and not for social distancing reasons. Tourists have, in recent years, become too fat.
As tourism slowly picks up in the Floating City, the industry is bracing for the same problems it had pre-pandemic; one of which being overladen gondolas struggling to navigate water traffic.
“Tourists are now overweight,” Raoul Roveratto, the president of the association of substitute gondoliers, told La Repubblica in no uncertain terms, likening those from “some countries” to “bombs” when they embark.
“When [the boat] is fully loaded, the hull sinks and water enters. Advancing with over half a tonne of meat on board is dangerous,” he added.
Regular ‘da nolo’ gondolas, which provide 30-minute tours of the narrow canals, will now accept a maximum of five guests, while the larger ‘gondola de la parade’ vessels that cross the Grand Canal will take 12, down from the former limit of 14.
Venice currently licenses 433 gondoliers and 180 substitutes, but many have been out of service since Italy’s strict lockdown on March 9. The country started lifting measures in May, but cities including Venice, which usually welcomes up to 30 million visitors a year, remain comparatively quiet.
Indeed, mid-lockdown, photos emerged of its green canals looking clear for the first time in decades in the absence of the hundreds of boats that usually churn up silt from the bottom.
Venice’s tradition of gondoliers dates back to 1094, and is one the city is keen to protect as tourists trickle back in. As such, another new measure to be introduced is a new rule that allows the offspring of gondoliers to gain a licence to operate the family vessel without taking a theory exam. Going forward, they need only have four years’ experience rowing the boat.
"Moths of which coffins might have been the chrysalis," mused Shelley of the gondola in 1818. The millenia-old, all-male guild of Venetian gondoliers is already one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. Only one woman has even been granted a private licence; Alex Hai in 2015, who has since come out as transgender.
The classic boats have 280 components and use eight types of wood: lime, larch, oak, fir, cherry, walnut, elm and mahogany. It takes great skill to navigate the 1,500lb vessels using a beech oar and a walnut forcola, or rowlock, each carved to suit individual gondoliers and designed to allow eight distinct manoeuvres. Moves presumably significantly more difficult under the ever-increasing weight of foreign tourists.
Two summers ago, when overtourism was at its peak in Venice, Greg Dickinson visited to film a mini-documentary on it. You can watch it below.
Last week when coronavirus travel restrictions were lifted for British voyagers, I visited the same city as a ghost town. Would you book a trip there during these times? Or do you, like Hugh Morris, shrink from the idea of a city break in this dystopian post-pandemic world? Let us know in the comments box below.
