1816: the Grandest Tour

Italy: Chapter 10

On seeing his charges were still tired, the guide recommended they leave the Doge's Palace and apartments for another day. They were sumptuous and extensive, and would require an afternoon or two to view them with any completeness. George and co. gratefully assented, and the party found its way back to the albergo and a night's well-earned rest.

During the several days that followed, the Palace proved harder to visit than even Gaetano had prepared for. The Austrian administration had taken over several rooms for official use, and now the general public was only permitted to visit on Tuesdays. During the Republic of course the whole place was largely off-limits to all but the city's ruling elite, but since Napoleon had toppled that regime the locals and tourists had grown used to viewing its treasury of Old Masters. It was just one more way the Austrians were losing favor with their subjects.

Having barely missed the Palace's open day, the tourists dedicated the rest of the week to seeing whatever else they had longed to see in the storied metropolis. They embraced the task with gusto, viewing churches like their own neighborhood's San Giovanni e San Paolo, the exquisite Santa Maria della Salute, and the famed Bridge of Sighs among many smaller sights.

This panoply of art and architectural beauty could not but affect all three of the young visitors. Amid the splendor of eight hundred years, however, the lads also couldn't ignore many clear signs of decay. Chief of these, as in so many parts of Europe, were the hordes of beggars. They loitered in every square, street and lane, and an unfortunate plurality, it seemed, were children. Asking their guide how so many urchins and vagabonds survived from each day to the next, he showed them to one of Venice's ubiquitous pumpkin stands. Until Gaetano pointed them out, George hadn't realized just how widespread these vendors were – two or three in practically every street. The fare they sold was a round fruit known by locals as Zucca Barucca, which looked to the tourists like any old pumpkin or squash. Fried slices of it went for one centime each – or one tenth of an English penny. Although it was humble sustenance indeed, five or six portions a day of this were enough to keep body and soul together. This, George supposed, was reason the Venetian begging populace seemed relatively better fed than in other towns.

The second of George and Tobias's illusions about the city (Isaac held few illusions of any kind) had to do with the canals, and their gondolas. Like many tourists to La Serenissima, the boys had formed a picture in their mind of moonlit paddles through the storied, mysterious waterways while enjoying the tales and songs of a seasoned gondolier in a smart, striped shirt. But as so often the case, reality was more prosaic. The canals they saw were clean enough to begin with, but these were largely the widest ones in the better-maintained parts of town. As they ventured to smaller neighborhoods, by contrast, many were filled with stinking trash, effluent waste, abandoned pumpkin rinds, and even sewage. The canals were all seawater though, so there was no danger of anyone drinking from them and contracting cholera, typhoid, or any of the river-borne diseases that so plagued London.

As a dutiful guide, Gaetano was only too happy to lead his charges to the best gondola tour he knew of. Even this, however, fell short of George and Tobias's rosy expectations. The boats, following an age-old law, were dressed like widows in only the drabbest black. They were all built as ugly little skiffs, each with an awning of black cloth under which none of the party could sit without stooping. Rowing through the narrow and often dirty canals, the vessels were steered by overworked men with too much care to avoid striking against other boats to think of singing for their passengers' amusement. After one such inquiry met with the most decided bemusement on the part of a gondolier, George and Tobias opted to forgo the notion altogether.