Craftsmanship in Venice

Compared to Canada, Venice, Italy is as different a building situation as you can imagine. This city was founded on more than 100 marshy islands, with the majority of these structures dating back to the 1300s to 1700s. And except for only two small, wooden outbuildings I’ve seen after walking more than 10km through the labyrinth of stone-paved pathways so far, all the rest are very heavy, solid-brick structures set on massive blocks of limestone that fade out of sight a foot or so underneath the nearly-opaque water. And as unlikely as it sounds, all this brick and mortar and stone rests on nothing more than wood pilings pounded into silt, extending down to a layer of hard clay that undergirds the city. The trees these pilings are made from – some as large as two feet in diameter – came from ancient forests across the Adriatic Sea in Slovenia. This area is now a treeless moor. Lack of oxygen in the water has prevented rot for centuries, and the mineral-rich water chemistry has actually caused the wooden pilings to petrify. Think of it like millions of organically developing concrete pier supports. Though I’ve never seen any buildings with the kind of cracks you’d expect from a shifting foundation, the system of pilings isn’t quite up to the task of supporting the many tall towers in Venice. Most of the big ones have a visible tilt, some quite extreme.

As unusual as this physical situation is to Canadian builders, even more foreign is the attitude towards craftsmanship that’s alive and well in Venice. Somehow, contrary to everything I thought was possible in the 21st century, Venetian culture manages to combine extremely high levels of manual skill (some trades taking as long as 15 years of apprenticeship and experience before reaching full tradesmen status), with the kind of work that most of us would consider impractical. The result is a level of beauty and craftsmanship that’s left me both impressed and jealous. Working cabinet shops, metalworking facilities and building sites are all amazingly neat and tidy – way cleaner than anything I’ve seen over the last 30 years in Canada. And the high level of craftsmanship I see here extends from businesses that have been in the same family for hundreds of years, right up to very young building enterprises. That’s what I’ll tell you about next, beginning with an introduction to a man named Roberto Tramontin.