Venice, love, and the gondola illusion

Once a practical means of transport, the gondola is now a symbol, a relic, and a romantic daydream that floats through canals steeped in history and imagination.

The gondola — Venice’s most iconic boat — has had quite the journey. Once a practical means of transport, it is now a symbol, a relic, and a romantic daydream that floats through canals steeped in history and imagination.

Today, tourists queue for a gondola ride, hoping to step into that daydream. And who can blame them? Lord Byron once described Venice as “extraordinary — her aspect is like a dream, and her history is like a romance.” The gondola has come to embody this vision. It’s difficult to separate the boat from the myth. But is it still a genuinely romantic experience — or has it become a theatrical illusion?

A boat designed for secrets

The gondola, as we see it today, is the last survivor of a family of human-powered boats that once glided through Venice. In its earlier days, it wasn’t a showpiece — it was an essential part of life. These boats were often fitted with a felze, a cabin-like enclosure with what we now call Venetian blinds. This privacy allowed for clandestine meetings and secret exchanges.

Romance, of course, flourishes in secrecy. The silent passage of a gondola through moonlit canals, under shuttered windows and arched bridges, must have felt like slipping into a dream. The enclosed cabin created an intimate space removed from the city around it. Today’s open-air gondolas, however, leave no place to hide — or to be hidden.

Romance on display

Modern gondolas are stripped of their felze. Their passengers, who are mostly tourists, are in full view of each other and the world. Tourists on the canal banks and in nearby boats film them. Gondoliers, dressed in their distinctive divisa da gondoliere, might be steering with one hand while speaking on their phones.

The gondola ride has become a scene within a larger play. Each boat is its own stage, carrying a couple or a family hoping to feel something timeless. But they’re not alone. Dozens of other gondolas float alongside them in the same narrow canals, often with similar hopes.

In these circumstances, even the most romantic-minded passenger will struggle to maintain the illusion. With each gondola producing its personal version of a timeless moment, the canals can resemble a floating assembly line of memory-making. Ironically, the act of capturing the illusion makes it all the more fleeting.

The crowd and the individual

Venice is a city that exemplifies the paradox of being alone in a crowd. Its narrow alleys and stone bridges invite intimate exploration, yet you often find yourself swept along by a quiet tide of other visitors. You may not acknowledge or speak to them, but they shape your experience — and you, theirs. Tourists walk through each other’s photographs, queue for the same must-dos, and seek the same “hidden gems” promoted online. The very effort to find something untouched often leads to the same well-trodden path. A restaurant described as “where locals eat” may now serve more tourists than Venetians. There’s a strange comfort in this repetition. The long lines, the hunt for authenticity, even the moments of mild frustration, become part of the shared pilgrimage. The wait for a view, or a ride, or a perfect sunset becomes its own badge of belonging.

The myth we keep alive

Over the days we spent in Venice, a thought began to take root: Venice works because we want it to. Promoted as one of the world’s most romantic cities, it benefits from the power of suggestion. People arrive with expectations and rarely act in ways that would contradict them. The tourists, in a way, are co-authors of the city’s ongoing narrative. They reenact the stories they’ve been told, investing in the idea of Venice as a place where romance floats like mist over water. They photograph themselves mid-dream, reinforcing the story for the next wave of visitors. The performance is earnest and effective. Even though over-tourism threatens Venice, the city’s myths are not crumbling under it, but thriving because of it.

More than romance

Still, Venice is more than just a romantic fantasy. It is also an engineering marvel, a city built atop wooden piles driven into marshland — a feat that would be impressive today, let alone in the 5th century. Its layout, dictated by water, shaped its history as a maritime republic and a centre of trade and power.

The city nurtured a unique artistic tradition. Isolated from the Italian mainland, Venetian Renaissance artists developed a distinct style, aided by a wealthy elite who used art as both decoration and diplomacy. Art, in Venice, was not just beautiful; it was political. Even in medicine, Venice contributed lasting ideas. During the bubonic plague, the city pioneered the concept of quarantine. Ships arriving from foreign ports were forced to anchor 40 days (quaranta giorni) at sea before docking — a policy inspired by religious symbolism and a pragmatic understanding of disease control.

The gondola as a symbol

Today, there are just over 400 gondolas left in Venice. Each one is built from more than 200 handcrafted wooden parts using eight different types of wood. Their asymmetrical shape, designed to balance the weight of a single gondolier, is a marvel of tradition and utility. Though no longer the vessel for romance and intrigue, the gondola remains symbolic. It represents the city’s ability to turn function into beauty, and beauty into mythology. To ride one today is not to travel unseen, but to step into a shared dream. It may not be private or spontaneous, but it is undeniably Venetian.

A city that persists

Venice is extraordinary, not just because it floats, but because it continues to float through time, myth, and tourism. Its beauty is layered with contradiction: the romantic and the overcrowded, the private and the staged, the sacred and the commercial. In a world where so much is disposable, Venice endures, partly through history, and partly through our desire to believe in it. Romance may no longer glide silently under the bridges. But the myth lives on, rowed along by the hopes of those who still believe in finding magic on the water.