The Venetian “Fondamenta”

Arianna Venice fondamenta, nizioleti, streets name, Venice 0

Venice is a unique and special city, and the names of its “streets” are different from any other city in the world.

In Venice there is only one “Strada” (street), the “strada nova” and just one “Piazza” (square), Piazza San Marco.

The only road signs you can find walking around Venice are called “nizioleti” (Venetian term which means “sheets”).

The nizioleti are wall paintings painted on the plaster of the buildings and they show names, directions and street numbers.

The appearance of these atypical street signs is unmistakable: they appear as white squares (this is why there is the reference to the small sheet) bordered with black and they contain letters, numbers and arrows painted by hand in black thanks to the use of molds.

A recurring word you’ll find is Fondamenta or Fondamente.

“Fondamenta” means “foundation” in Italian, and it describes the walking bank along a canal. It was (and still is today) a popular area to load and unload boats, kind of like a dock.

The Fondamenta is the road that faces the water, just like the one I’m looking at now from my studio.

There may be different types of fondamenta, but they all will have some shore, the landing place for boats, with steps made of Istrian stone that descend into the canal and which are usually covered by slippery algae that capture unsuspecting tourists and sometimes take them to water.

Some fondamenta have wrought iron railings, interspersed with metal columns or Istrian stone, while others have masonry parapets covered with stone.

Some fondamenta have no parapets and have only a strip of Istrian stone along the edge that runs along the canal.

There are particularly large and long fondamenta, like the Zattere, which runs along the Giudecca Canal.

Other fondmaneta are not very large but they can be very long and you can find a lot of commercial activities, such as the Fondamenta della Misericordia which I wanted to portray in my engraving and which continues changing its name in Fondamenta dei Ormesini, where my studio is located.

The fondamenta has the particular charm to represent the union between land and water, in a city that lives in balance between these two elements and which can take the best from both, transforming them into a unique magic.