Discover The Venetian Gondola

A gondola is built in a squero, a boatyard with a sloped timber ramp running down to the water, and the trade is unusual in having no drawings: dimensions are held by the builder and set out directly on the timber. A yard needs a bank shallow enough to haul a hull out, which is why the few surviving squeri sit where they do -- San Trovaso on its own rio, and a small number of others in Dorsoduro and on Giudecca.

Eight woods go into a single hull, each chosen for a property rather than for appearance -- oak for the ribs, elm where wear matters, larch and fir for planking, walnut, cherry, lime and mahogany for the fittings. Some 280 separate pieces are involved, and a hull takes months.

The two most demanding components are made by a separate craftsman, the remer: the forcola, the oarlock, carved from a single block of walnut into a twisting form that offers around eight distinct rowing positions, and the oar itself, about four metres of beech.

The squero di San Trovaso in Dorsoduro is the best known of the surviving yards and the easiest to see, its wooden buildings looking more Alpine than Venetian -- the boatbuilders originally came down from the Cadore forests that supplied the timber, and built in the style they knew.