Capitolo 1 Introduction to the use of the gondola

1 - The use of the gondola
pag.  1 

The "fresco" in a boat was a "worldly" tradition.	In a city like Venice, the water ways have always been the most used for transports. The Gondola, for its characteristics of manoeuvrability and speed, has been, till the coming of the motorized means, the boat most suitable to the people transport. It was born as private means for people of a certain class, it was used both to move from a place to another of the city( and to go to the nearest islands), and for the pleasure of moving on the water aboard a comfortable and silent boat. In a Gondola, in fact, one could enjoy the cool in the hot summer nights, showing off one's own elegance, talking with the passengers of the near gondole, beyond doing all a series of uses (and abuses) that made this wonderful boat a private territory functioning as a house but also as a gaming-house, embassy, garconniere and more.
"Gondolone da parada" in the Great Canal.	Of course not everyone could have or hire a gondola for these uses: the people, generally, got on it to make himself " ferry"from one part to the other of a canal. For this need, in fact, they were used boats with a plane bottom much similar to the "gondoloni da parada" that are used nowadays to cross the Great Canal.
The famous "trip in a gondola".	Still now there is a similar distinction: there are Gondole destined to the visit of the city, to the night cool, to the serenades, to the famous "trip in a gondola" ( they are called "charterage gondole", because they are , in practice, hired) and there are gondole "da parada" used for the crossing of canals, for "ferry", that is to say. The first are used generally from tourists, and, but only in some occasions (marriages, for example), even from Venetians, who are continuous boat-goers, for the practical needs of going from one part to the other of the Great Canal.