the.com/gondolier
a man who turns a 600-pound boat into a one-armed ballet down narrow water
means a person who propels and steers a Venetian gondola, standing at the stern with a single long oar.
from From the Italian gondola, the iconic flat-bottomed Venetian boat, with the -iere suffix marking the doer (as in cavaliere, the knight). Gondola itself is of uncertain origin — possibly from a Venetian dialect word, with guesses reaching toward Greek kondoura, 'a kind of small vessel,' though no one can prove the trail. What's certain is the word rose with the boat in Venice, where the gondolier became as much a fixture of the canals as the water itself.
- License test
- Only ~400 hold the brutally exclusive Venetian license
- First woman
- Took 900 years to arrive in 2010
- One oar
- Steers and propels using a single asymmetric blade
- Family business
- Trade often passed down through generations of locals
- Dress code
- The striped shirt and ribboned hat are mandatory
gondoliers of venice — approximately 400 licensed gondoliers operating in venice's grand canal and lagoon since the 11th century