Change of course: Venice is looking for gondoliers. Is it for you?
What would be the death of our colleague Sophie from Italiamo could be someone else’s livelihood. Sophie would succumb to a combination of embarrassment and clumsiness, while also taking a whole horde of tourists down with her. But hey, perhaps you were born for this extraordinary job. Venice is looking for gondoliers to carry out the city’s most characteristic profession. A wealth of experience isn’t necessary, because the city offers gondola-driving lessons and more.
Tourist attraction
Just as the sightseeing boat in Amsterdam is impossible to imagine the canals without, the gondola is inseparable from Venice’s waterways. It’s simply a somewhat more charming sight, with the hard-working gondolier in a striped shirt and straw hat on the wooden boats instead of a large, sailing hop-on hop-off bus with a driver in a short-sleeved shirt. A tourist attraction, but also a tradition that has existed for an eternity (since 1094, to be precise) and that the city of Venice is more than happy to preserve. And that requires new recruits in the form of captains.
Arte del Gondoliere
The basic requirements for becoming a gondolier are being over eighteen, having completed secondary school, holding a swimming certificate and having a certificate of good health. If you meet these requirements, you can sign up for the Arte del Gondoliere training course—in other words, the art of being a gondolier. There, you’ll prove whether you can row, or at least show that you have what it takes to learn.
The theory lessons last thirty hours, after which you take a waterways exam on traffic regulations. You’ll also receive English and French lessons covering the history, art and culture of Venice, with extra attention paid to the construction of the city and its waterways. From a master gondolier, you’ll learn to row with a single oar in ten hours, among other things. All rather useful if you want to handle an eleven-metre, six-hundred-kilogram vessel.
Changing course in Venice
A few fun facts about your potential future job: there are currently around 433 gondoliers rowing through the waters of La Serenissima. In the past, only men were allowed to do the job, and the craft was passed down exclusively to sons. In 2009, the first female gondolier put an end to that, and there are now fourteen women in charge of one of these boats. So, interested? You can apply here until midnight on 27 August 2024.
Read also:
- These are the most beautiful hotels in Venice for a romantic weekend
- Remarkable: this is the only city in Italy where people never drink a spritz
- 7x the tastiest dishes in Northern Italy
Source: Italiamo
