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1. Gondoliers at Night
The tourist gondola trade, active during the day, positively flourishes by night. Especially at night, the gondola experience is likely to include (for a whacking extra fee) one or more musicians providing tenor and accordian accompaniment to the ride. The clip recorded here is of a convoy of several gondolas, sharing two musicians, on an early December night, passing east on the Rio dei Fuseri in the San Marco sestiere. We were standing on a bridge, so the gondolas are passing from side to side underneath us; you can also hear footsteps, as people walk by, crossing the bridge.
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2. Morning Bells from S. Geremia
Venetian churches come equipped with campanili, or bell towers. Many of these are still active, and ring out their bells without electronic amplification. Each church seems to have a slightly different ringing technique, bells with unique tones in varying numbers, and an individual offset from universal clock time for the beginning of ringing. The result is a delightful cacophony of multiple peals of bells, starting at various times, coming from different directions, at differing volume levels because of the distances and echoes involved. The bells generally begin at seven in the morning, and usually ring every half hour. They all cease for the night after 9:30. The bells in this sound clip come from the tower of San Geremia, just west of the Cannaregio Canal, a few paces north of the Grand Canal. They were recorded from a third-floor (U.S. fourth-floor) window about 100 feet in from the eastern bank of the Cannaregio Canal. At the beginning, the creaks, groans and thumps that you hear are the window opening and the outside shutters being drawn back for the day. Since daily life continues while the bells are ringing, you can also hear people walking down the very narrow calle roughly 35 feet below the window.
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