Feast of the Redeemer (Il Redentore) and other Venice, Italy Local Custom Tips

Palladio designed the church of the Redentore, which is located on the island of Giudecca. It was built in thanksgiving for ending the plague of 1576, which wiped out one-third of the city's population. Every year since it was built the Doge would visit this church, crossing on a bridge made of pontoon boats. Today the festival is held every third week in July, with fireworks, a regatta, and the locals celebrate by cooking and bringing their food and furniture outside, where they eat and drink the night away by the side of the canal. The pontoon bridge is still built, and it is the only time when you can cross the canal on foot from the Zattere to the island of Giudecca.

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As part of the Redentore Festival there is the regatta, or boat race on the Giudecca Canal. The morning of the regatta we went to mass and then outisde to la Pesca per la Benificenza (raffle to benefit the church). There were some valuable prizes, and my mom actually won a small Murano chandelier.
All I won was a sponge. :-((

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For the feast of the Redentore a pontoon bridge is built spanning the Giudecca Canal, from Santa Maria della Salute to the Redentore Church. Here you see the bridge being taken apart.

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Venice is so artsy, you will have definite overload, what with the beautiful architecture, museums, and shops filled with all kinds of local crafts, including masks, puppets, sculptures, jewelry, everything. One day as we crossed the Accademia Bridge we stopped to admire the work of painter who was painting the church of Santa Maria della Salute.

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On one visit to Venice, we purposely lost ourselves and found the shop of the wood sculptor, Livio DeMarchi. Not your ordinary woodcarver. In the window was a wood dining room set in which the chairs were jeans in a seated position. It was the most incredible thing! The other window had wooden underwear on a clothesline, so realistic and whimsical! Unfortunately the shop was closed. The following year when we went to Venice I was determined to find this shop again and meet the sculptor, even though we had no idea how we got there in the first place. Well, guess what, we found it! The guy was so nice he gave me pictures of his work to show my students and described his wooden Mercedes boat which is amphibious! We took a great picture together, where he poses with his wooden fedora.

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When you're in Venice it really does help to get lost because you will come across the most delightful things! There was a shoemaker, of course not your ordinary shoemaker, in a neighborhood I cannot remember. But the window had leather slippers shaped like gondolas, 8-inch high platforms, and bare feet made of red leather which were shoes!

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There are few surving gondola workshops in Venice. The Squero di San Trovaso is one of them. It is not open to the public, but we passed it numerous times and saw gondolas being worked on outside all the time across the canal.

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There are endless mask shops throughout Venice, and you will find all kinds of characters from traditional Commedia dell'Arte masks to modern designs. Traditional masks are papier-mache,but you will also find cheaper versions in plastic or plaster.

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Is this a real doge? No, it's my husband having some fun in a mask shop. What was strange was the perfect fit of this cap, the only one in the shop...hmmm.

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My favorite things to do in Venice is visit the mask shops. I get so many ideas, and once in a while see artists at work.

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