Squero di San Trovaso

The Squero di San Trovaso is one of Venice's last surviving traditional gondola boatyards, a cluster of low wooden buildings that look more like an Alpine chalet than anything else on the Venetian waterline -- because the carpenters who originally built and staffed it came from the Dolomites, not the lagoon.

The squero is a private business with people doing skilled and occasionally hazardous work a few metres away. It is not open to the public, there is no visitor area, and walking in is not on offer.

Everything is visible from the Fondamenta Nani opposite, which is where to stand. Photographing the yard from there is normal and accepted; photographing the craftsmen at close range from their own side is not.

Fewer than a handful of squeri survive from the dozens that once operated. They stay open because gondolas are still commissioned and repaired -- the trade supports the buildings, not the other way round, and it survives on the gondola service rather than on visitors.

The fondamenta opposite is narrow and residential. It is a good place to stand for five minutes and a poor place for a group to assemble.

The Squero di San Trovaso is a working boatyard, not a museum, and is not open to the public -- the best view is from the Fondamenta Nani, directly across the Rio di San Trovaso, where the yard's open-sided sheds are clearly visible. It's a short walk from the Accademia Bridge, in Dorsoduro.

This is a working yard, not an attraction, so the timing that matters is working hours. Weekday mornings are when hulls are actually being built -- timbers steamed and bent, planking nailed, boats up on the slip -- and that is the whole reason to come.

Weekends and the August shutdown mean sheds with boats in them and nobody working, which is a different and much lesser thing to look at.

The yard faces roughly east across the rio, so morning light falls into the open sheds and makes the interiors visible from the fondamenta opposite. By late afternoon the sheds are in shadow and read as dark openings.

Only about ten new gondolas are built across all of Venice in a year, each taking two to three months, so the odds of catching a hull at an interesting stage on any given morning are decent but not guaranteed.