By: Lia Contesso
Submitted: 2010-05-21 04:50:15 | Word Count: 578
But you only need to go to the Grand Canal or to St Mark’s basin to understand that modernity, with all its implications and consequences, has arrived in the lagoon city, too: the noise of motorboats, which can clash with the silence of the calli inside the city, and the sight of the huge cruise ships approaching the coast make us come down to earth. But looking at the Grand Canal, or travelling along it on a vaporetto-boat after walking down the timeless calli of the city, where the only noises you can hear are the voices of passers-by, you cannot help wondering how Venice was like when motor boats did not exist, and people could move about only on rowboats.
This is what the organisers of the first vogalonga, one of the most important rowing events in Venice, a 30 km long regatta in which many rowboats take part every year, must have thought. The need of organising such an event did not come only from the bare desire to admire Venice as it looked like in the past, but from the will of protesting against the swell caused by motorboats, which, now as in the past, is likely to cause serious damages to the lagoon city. The aim of the organisers of the first edition of the vogalonga, in 1974, was expressing their disagreement with a phenomenon which was harmful to the city, and catching people’s attention towards this problem. About 500 rowboats took part in the first edition of the event, but this number has increased year after year, and now about 1500 boats take part in the vogalonga every year. These numbers show the success that the event has achieved, although it must be said that with the passing of years the vogalonga has lost a bit of its feature of protest, and has become more like a folkloristic and sporting event, which attracts also many rowers from abroad.
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Every year since the first edition in 1974, on May the vogalonga gives the city of Venice, its inhabitants and tourists a Sunday without traffic and motors (in 2010 the event will take place on the 23rd of May), a Sunday when the lagoon city gets coloured with hundreds of rowboats coming from all over the world: during the vogalonga a typical Venice boat is likely to run side by side with the boats of the University of Oxford or Cambridge, or with a Chinese dragon boat. Although it was born of the desire of recovering old Venetian boats and traditions, like the Venetian rowing, the event has been made interesting also through this variety and internationality, and with the passing of time it has become a broader event.
One of the things that attract so many rowers also from abroad is certainly the beauty of the setting where the vogalonga takes place: the boats gather and start from St Mark’s basin, opposite the Doge’s Palace, and then go to the lagoon islands; they come back to Venice through the Rio di Cannaregio and arrive in Punta della Dogana. A wonderful show also for the crowd, who can admire an unusual Venice, animated by rowboats of every shape and nationality, and enjoy the taste of the city of the past.
