Ahhh Venice - Part 2
Trip Start
Apr 02, 2012
1
10
19
Trip End
Apr 20, 2012
Venice, Veneto, Italy
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Did you know that the body of St. Mark, one of the apostles, is buried in the cathedral in the square. Apparently the Venetians stole the body and brought it to Venice. St. Mark is the Patron Saint of Venice.
Anyways, we walked passed the Doge's Palace and the Cathedral, through a couple of maze-like streets until we found the glass factory. The Venetians are famous for their glass. We watched a master glass blower make a vase and also a miniature horse. It was amazing to watch how quickly he worked the glass. It takes 14 years of study and apprenticeship to become a glass master. The glass artist took a long rod out of an oven. As soon as he removes the rod with glass on it from the oven, he starts rolling it. When he made the vase he blew on the end of the rod to make the glass hollow in the centre. He rolls it all the time, never stopping. In one minute he is finished. We were all so amazed.
We walked into a finishing room and there we learned how the glass is decorated. Blue glass is made blue because cobalt is infused into the glass. Green glass is infused with copper. Red glass is infused with gold. Red glass is the most expensive glass.
At noon, we went through the Doge's Palace. It is actually the government house. Venice had an elected government in the Renaissance. It was quite unusual. Many countries had a monarchy at that time, but not Venice. A leader was elected by the people. The leader served for life. The prison is connected to the Palace. We went for a tour of the prison. We crossed the very famous bridge in the picture we sent yesterday to get from the Palace to the prison.
Then we went for a boat ride to eat lunch on the island of Burano. We passed many other islands to get there. Burano is very interesting. Each of the joined together houses is painted a very bright color. You could tell which houses belonged to the different families by the color of their house. When Napolean conquered Venice he brought in a system of numbering the houses which we have today. But the people of Burano still paint their houses as they did many years ago even though they accepted the house numbering system.
Our boat took us by the Moses Project on the way back to the dock station. The Moses Project is very important to Venice. You see, with the rising sea waters, Venice and all the surrounding islands are in danger of flooding. The Moses Project is a massive and very expensive engineering project which is trying to hold the sea back and keep Venice from disappearing under the sea.
Question:
1. Venice is built upon oak tree pilings. Why don't the oak pilings rot in the mud?
2. Venice was not always part of Italy. In what year did Venice become part of Italy?
Comments
The water is only about 6 feet deep, and the houses were built on wood piles that were very tightly packed together with clay. On top of the wood piles is the foundation of the buildings.
Because there is not oxygen under the water, the wood piles do not decay.
yes, now think about the year that Venice first started to be built. All of the work of driving those logs into the mud was done by hand.