Golden Hour in a Gondola: Venice from the Water

Traveller's Tales: Anthony Curione takes us on a gondola ride through Venice. If you have a story of your own to share, get in touch.

The dock, before sunset

The sun was hanging just above the horizon when I reached the dock, and the whole canal had turned the colour of weak honey. The lagoon smell was in the air — salt, weed, something older underneath — mixed with the smell of pastries from a café behind me. The streets were full of the usual murmur of Venetians and visitors going about their evenings.

Then I stepped down into the gondola, and the murmur dropped away. What was left was water slapping gently against stone.

Out into the Grand Canal

The gondolier was middle-aged, with a face that had spent a lot of time outdoors and a striped shirt. He tipped his hat, pushed away from the dock with the ease of long practice and set the oar moving in a steady rhythm.

“Welcome to Venice,” he said. His voice carried. “You've chosen the best way to see the city.”

We moved into the Grand Canal, the wide artery that everything else in Venice feeds into. The palazzi stood on both sides like a row of old sentinels, their plaster faded into ochre, blush and cream. Some of them lean slightly, greeting their neighbours at an angle, which is what happens when a city spends centuries negotiating with the sea. Geraniums spilled over the wrought-iron balconies and caught the last of the light.

The gondolier tilted his chin at one particularly grand building. It had once belonged to a famous merchant, he said. Marco Polo had travelled these waters. I looked at the façade and tried to picture the explorer coming home with his stories, which is the sort of thing Venice invites you to do.

The side canal

We turned off the Grand Canal and everything changed. The noise fell away; the water went dark and still; the sky became a narrow strip between the buildings. Washing hung across the gaps above us, shifting in the breeze. On a windowsill, a tabby cat watched us pass with the flat, unimpressed gaze that cats reserve for boats.

I ran my fingers along the edge of the boat, smooth under the varnish. The gondolier began to hum something old, timing it to his strokes, and the sound came back off the walls. For a minute or two it was easy to believe we had slipped into an earlier century, when the pace of life was set by an oar.

The low bridge and the little piazza

We passed under a stone bridge so low that I ducked without thinking. On the other side the canal opened into a small piazza. Children were playing at the water's edge, their shouting carrying across like bells, and a couple stood on a nearby dock with their hands linked, entirely elsewhere.

“Are you here for long?” the gondolier asked, into the quiet.

“A few days,” I said. “But I could stay forever.”

He smiled as though he had heard it before and meant it every time. “Venice does that to people. The beauty is only part of it — the city has a soul, and it follows you home.”

Under the Rialto

Later we passed beneath the Rialto Bridge. The balustrades above were packed with people leaning over, waving and taking photographs as we came through. I waved back. It was strange to be part of somebody else's photograph and to feel connected, briefly, to all the people who come to Venice looking for beauty, or history, or something in themselves they hope the city will name.

The last of the light

By then the sun had dropped and the light had thickened to amber, stretching long shadows over the water. The gondolier steered into another quiet canal where the only sound was the occasional dip of the oar. I leaned back and let the movement do the work. It was one of those moments that refuses to be hurried.

Back at the dock

All journeys on water end at a dock. He helped me out, and I handed him a tip. “Thank you,” I said. “That was unforgettable.”

“It's Venice,” he said, with a wink. “Leaving an impression is the local trade.”

I walked away and the city came back in layers: conversation, glasses touching, a violin somewhere out of sight. Underneath it I kept the quiet of the side canals, which is the part I remember when I think about Venice now.

Anthony Curione is a traveller and storyteller from upstate New York with a taste for the world's less obvious places. He has visited more than fifteen countries and writes about them at Curione Travel. When he is not planning a trip he is usually in a national park, and he likes nothing better than persuading other people to go and look for themselves. You can also find him on Instagram and Facebook.