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Building a Better Gondola
See how a Venetian gondola is made at the gondola workshop of Squero San Trovaso in Venice, Italy
One of the most interesting (and photographed) sights you’ll see in Venice is the squero di San Trovaso, a small gondola boatyard that first opened in the 17th century.
While there were reportedly 10,000 of these elegant boats plying Venice’s canals in the 16th century, today there are but 350 and the job of gondoliere is still a coveted profession, passed down from father to son over the centuries.
This squero (boatyard) lies next to the Church of San Trovaso along the narrow Rio San Trovaso, just north of the Zattere, the wide sunny walkway that runs alongside the Giudecca Canal in Dorsoduro. The squero is surrounded by Tyrolian-looking wooden structures (a true rarity in this stone city built on water) that are home to the multiple-generational owners and original workshops for the traditional boats.
How to build a gondola
The Gondola Parking Lot
Where can you see hundreds of gondolas congregating together? The Bacino Orseolo just north of Piazza San Marco (walk to the west end of the piazza and take the last tunnel heading north under the colonnade). Frankly, I'm surprised this spot isn't in most guidebooks. Every evening dozens of gondolas jostle for space in a mini-lagoon-like wide spot in the canal, and gondoliers chat while lounging against the bacino's surrounding railing.
Putting together one of the sleek black boats is a fascinatingly exact science that is still done in the revered traditional manner.
The boats have been painted black since a 16th-century sumptuary law—one of many passed by the local legislators as excess and extravagance spiraled out of control. Whether regarding boats or baubles, laws were passed to restrict the gaudy outlandishness that, at the time, was commonly used to outdo the Joneses.
Propelled by the strength of a single gondoliere, these boats unique to Venice have no modern equipment and rarely move at any great speed but with unrivaled grace. The right side of the gondola is lower since the gondoliere always stands in the back of the boat on the left.
Although this squero is the city’s oldest and one of only three remaining (the other two are immeasurably more difficult to find), it works predominantly on maintenance and repair. Occasionally they build a new one, which takes some 40 to 45 working days. The carefully craft the gondola from the seven types of wood—mahogany, cherry, fir, walnut, oak, elm, and lime—necessary to give the shallow and asymmetrical boat its various characteristics.
Venetian Gondolas 101
Take a gondola ride
Learn to drive a gondola
Visit a
gondola boatyard
After they puzzle all the pieces together, the painting, the ferro (the iron symbol of the city affixed to the bow), and the forcole (the squiggly wooden post that serves as an complex oarlock) are commissioned out to various local artisans.
Well aware they have become a tourist site, they don’t mind if you watch them at work from across the narrow Rio di San Trovaso but don’t try to invite yourself in.
Dorsoduro 1097, along the Rio San Trovaso, southwest of the Accademia Gallery (best seen from the far side of the canal)
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This article was last updated in December 2006. All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998–2008 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.
