40 Fun Facts About Gondolas

Why is a Venetian gondola never pushed along with a pole like a punt, despite the popular belief?

The water is too deep for a pole, so a gondolier sculls with one long oar that also steers the boat.

A Venetian law against showy display made which colour compulsory for every gondola?

Black was imposed to stop nobles outdoing each other with ever showier boats. Ambassadors' gondolas stayed dazzling, hung with bright silk, gold fringe and gilded wood.

To run straight under one oar worked from the right, how is a Venetian gondola's hull shaped?

Wider on the left by roughly 23 centimetres, the lopsided hull resists the urge to veer off course with every stroke.

In supermarkets and pharmacies, which piece of equipment do retailers call a gondola?

A freestanding shelf unit is a gondola in shop-fitting talk, and rows of them placed end to end form a store's aisles.

Which James Bond film has Roger Moore flee through Venice in a gondola that turns into a hovercraft?

Moonraker (1979) gave Bond a propeller-driven gondola that rises on a hovercraft skirt and drives out of the canal across the square.

By legend, beneath which Venice landmark should a couple kiss in a gondola at sunset for lasting love?

Bridge of Sighs kisses drive the plot of the 1979 film A Little Romance, whose young runaways travel from Paris to Venice to try the legend out.

Which South American city relies on Mi Teleférico, a gondola network that forms the backbone of its public transport?

La Paz sits about 400 metres below its neighbour El Alto, so gondolas in the air replaced the winding, congested roads between the two.

Besides boat handling and Venetian history, what does the exam for a gondolier's licence test?

Foreign languages are tested because nearly every fare is a tourist. The gondoliers' guild issues only about 400 licences.

Which American writer, visiting Venice in 1867, said the storied gondola looked more like a hearse?

Mark Twain mocked the boat in The Innocents Abroad, then conceded a few pages later that it glided as freely and gracefully as a serpent.

What do the gondolas at the Venetian resort in Las Vegas hide that the boats of Venice lack?

An electric motor sits in each flat-bottomed hull at the resort, which has run the rides on its replica canal since opening in 1999.

How do gondoliers row in the Venetian style called voga alla veneta, unlike most oarsmen?

Standing, facing forward is how a gondolier rows from the rear deck, with a clear view of the traffic ahead, and Venetians still race this way in regattas.

Besides decoration, what does the metal ferro on the bow of a Venetian gondola serve as?

A counterweight is its real job: the ferro offsets the gondolier at the far end of the boat, and may be brass, steel or aluminium.

The six front teeth on the metal ferro of a gondola are popularly said to represent what in Venice?

The city's districts, the sestieri, are the usual story, though old paintings show gondolas with only four or five teeth.

The curved top of the ferro on a Venetian gondola is popularly said to represent what?

The Doge's cap gets the top of the blade in this folklore, which appears in no writing older than the ferro's modern shape.

On a gondola, what is the forcola, a sculpted walnut piece made to measure for each gondolier?

The oarlock on a gondola is a twisting sculpture with eight points of control, each giving the rower a different speed or turn.

What was the felze, a fitting that most Venetian gondolas carried until the early 20th century?

A small cabin with shuttered windows, the felze hid passengers from weather and onlookers. It may have gone because tourists said it blocked the view.

What do Venetians call the plain gondola ferries, rowed by two oarsmen, that cross the Grand Canal?

Traghetto crossings survive because only four bridges span the Grand Canal, so locals hop a shared gondola instead of walking round.

What kind of traditional Venetian workplace is a squero?

A boatyard, or squero, builds new gondolas and cleans working ones, as often as monthly in summer. Each new boat is assembled from 280 handmade pieces.

Which headgear completes a gondolier's outfit of striped top, red neckerchief and dark trousers?

A straw hat with a wide brim tops the uniform, and the stripes on the shirt may be either blue or red.

Which Venetian painter of Grand Canal views recorded older gondolas with two rowers and lower prows?

Canaletto painted the gondola before its makeover: the curved, banana-shaped boat of today dates only from the 19th century.

Which duo premiered the comic opera The Gondoliers at London's Savoy Theatre, their last great success?

Gilbert and Sullivan opened it in 1889 for a run of 554 performances, though its satire aims more at British society than at Venice.

What are the folk songs of gondoliers called, a style later borrowed by Chopin and Offenbach?

Barcarolle rhythms copy the sway of a gondolier's stroke, almost always in a lilting six-eight time at a moderate tempo.

Which composer wrote the piano piece La lugubre gondola while staying with Richard Wagner in Venice?

Franz Liszt may have had a premonition: Wagner died in Venice weeks later, and his funeral journey began aboard a gondola to the railway station.

Which Venetian boatbuilding family gave the gondola its modern banana curve in the 19th century?

Tramontin heirs still run the family yard, and the city later froze the design by banning any further changes to how the boat is built.

Venice's Vogalonga, a 30-kilometre rowing event for all comers, began in 1975 as a protest against what?

Motorboats throw up a swell that damages the historic city, so rowers answered with a non-competitive race in which everyone gets a medal.

Metrocable in which Colombian city was the first gondola line built as scheduled public transport?

Medellín built Line K from the river valley up to steep hillside neighbourhoods and tied it into the rest of its metro network.

Which Canadian ski resort's Peak 2 Peak Gondola hangs 436 metres above a valley floor?

Whistler Blackcomb opened the link in 2008 with a free span of about three kilometres between towers, a world record until 2017.

Which Florida resort opened the Skyliner gondola network in 2019 to link its hotels and attractions?

Walt Disney World skipped air conditioning in its gondolas, relying on reflective glass and cross-breezes from vents to beat the heat.

Hong Kong's Ngong Ping 360 gondola climbs Lantau Island to a plateau best known for which landmark?

Tian Tan Buddha, the Big Buddha, comes into view on the 25-minute ride, and some gondolas have glass floors for the view straight down.

What device lets a gondola lift's carriages slow down inside stations while the cable keeps running?

A detachable grip, spring-loaded, lets go of the moving cable so each carriage can crawl through the station on slow-turning tyres.

Which airline first sponsored London's cross-river gondola line, which was added to the Tube map?

Emirates paid £36 million for a ten-year deal, and the Thames crossing between Greenwich and the Royal Victoria Dock ran as the Emirates Air Line.

Singapore's gondola line from Mount Faber crosses Keppel Harbour to reach which resort island?

Sentosa is reached by a line that added glass-bottomed gondolas in 1999 and once dressed its fleet as Pokémon Poké Balls.

Which country sent ore gondolas along the Kristineberg–Boliden ropeway, the longest ever built?

Sweden strung the 96-kilometre line when wartime shortages of fuel and rubber made trucking ore too costly, and it kept running until 1987.

Which Colorado ski town runs a free public gondola to its companion town, Mountain Village?

Telluride's gondola is the only free public transport of its kind in the United States, built to improve air quality by keeping cars off the road.

Which part of a blimp or Zeppelin do aviators call the gondola, a term borrowed from Venice's boats?

The crew compartment hangs below the gas-filled envelope, and on early Zeppelins the engines rode in gondolas of their own.

On North American railroads, what type of rolling stock, first built for coal, is called a gondola?

An open-topped car has hauled loose bulk loads since the 1830s, and the rounded modern versions are nicknamed bathtub gondolas.

Which Swiss physicist rode a sealed balloon gondola to become the first person in the stratosphere?

Auguste Piccard climbed to nearly 16 kilometres in 1931, and the tall professor later became the model for Tintin's Professor Calculus.

Which Scottish landmark lifts canal boats 24 metres in a pair of giant gondolas?

Falkirk Wheel gondolas stay balanced whatever they carry, because a floating boat displaces exactly its own weight as it enters.

Like gondola, lagoon and regatta, which everyday word did English borrow from Venetian?

Ciao began as a Venetian phrase meaning 'I am your slave', a courtly way of saying 'at your service'.

The Gulmarg Gondola, one of the highest lifts on Earth, climbs a Himalayan ski resort in which country?

India's line in Kashmir rises in two stages to almost 4,000 metres on a shoulder of Apharwat Peak, and was built with a French lift maker.