12 September/13 September 2015 ★ FTWeekend 7

Our chefs tonight are Dimitri Gris,who normally presides at the up-and-coming CoVino restaurant in the city’sCastello district, and his Italo-Vietnam-ese partner Huyen Tran Thi Thu, who istraining with the Alajmo brothers, themasterminds behind the three-Miche-lin-starred Le Calandre near Padua andtheone-starQuadri in StMark’sSquare.

Despite the diminutive kitchen, theysummon a feast fit for a doge. Gazpachois served in little glasses as we cruisethrough the twilight. Concocted fromlocal tomatoes, asparagus and whitepeaches, its salty-sweet tang is height-ened by stalks of samphire that grow onthe lagoon’s barene (sandbanks) andflame-coloured nasturtiums sourcedfrom an orchard on the Giudecca. A sin-gle calamaro tentacle has been hookedovertherim.

The lagoon’s genius loci continues towhisper through the salad of local shell-fish and seafood risotto that follows.Given Venice’s historic rapport with theeast, it is fitting that dessert should con-sist of a green-tea ice cream scatteredwith chunks of white peach and crum-ble. So exquisite is that finale, it reduces

Travel

Sink or swimVenice | While giant ships and rising tides menace the city, Rachel Spence joins the maiden voyage

of a cruise company offering intimate, expert-led trips to rarely visited parts of the lagoon

E very time I put down my feetthey are engulfed in silkyblack mud so I keep swim-ming. It’s no hardship. Thesky is a hazy blue; the water

has the metallic sheen of a mirror; sostill are the seagrasses they could becarved from wood. The only movementcomes from darting butterflies andjumping fish. Were it not for the distanttollingofachurchbellwecouldbe intheAmazondelta.

Welcome to the Venetian lagoon asyou have never experienced it before.Even for me, as someone who lived inVenice for many years, this week is spe-cial. I have swum often in the lagoon’ssoggy-bottomed waters, yet I neverknew, for example, that the channel inwhich we are splashing around is knowninVenetiandialectasa ghebo.

Mysourceof informationisFrancescoCalzolaio. An architect by trade, hemoved to Venice from Le Marche in1978 at the age of 19. His realisation thatthe lagoon is, as he puts it, “the city’sheartbeat”, compelled him into a life-long study of its history, ecology andinfrastructure.

“Most visitors spend no more than anafternoon on Murano, Burano or Tor-cello,” observes Calzolaio. “They neverdiscover how much the lagoon has tooffernorwhyit is so important.”

Without the lagoon there would be noVenice. Part salt, part fresh, the body ofwater was born millennia ago as theBrenta, Piave and Sile rivers courseddown towards the Adriatic Sea to findtheir impetus halted by land separatedby three inlets — Chioggia, Malamoccoand the Lido — which allowed the waterarestrictedpassage.

In the 5th century AD, the wetlandsbecame a refuge for mainlanders fleeingGermanic invaders, who didn’t like get-ting their feet wet. The marsh-dwellersquickly learnt how to shore up theirshape-shifting havens. A trade in saltflourished. As Cassiodorus, the prefectof Ravenna, put it enviously in AD523:“You live like sea birds . . . The solidityof the earth on which [your homes] restis secured only by osier and wattle; yetyou do not hesitate to oppose so frail abulwarktothewildnessof thesea.”

Resilient though the inhabitants havebeen, their islands and the 220 sq milelagoon itself are also fragile. New com-mercial canals have altered the delicatetidal flows; the acqua alta that floods thecity periodically has grown higher,owing partly to global warming. The€5.4bn scheme to build a giant dam,Mose, as a barrier to the worst of theflooding, has been slowed since aninvestigation into corruption which lastyear saw the arrests of 35 politicians,finance police and businessmen, includ-ing Venice’s then mayor Giorgio Orsoni.

Meanwhile gigantic cruise ships con-tinue to sail perilously close to St Mark’sSquare, damaging the tidal equilibriumand risking irrevocable destructionshouldtheytouchland.

Calzolaio aims to help visitors experi-ence the lagoon on a rather more inti-mate scale. His new company, Lagu-nalonga, offers week-long tours forgroups of between two and six guests,who eat and sleep on board a classic,three-cabin cruiser. Expert guides toislands that are infrequently visited byoutsiders, inadditiontogourmetcuisine(both on board and in restaurants) thatdraws on local produce, add to the rarityof the experience. I joined him, andsome of his friends and colleagues, forthemaidenvoyage lastmonth,beforehelaunches inearnestnextMarch.

We rendezvous on the mainland atVilla Malcontenta, a Palladian dwellingon a willow-fringed kink of the Brentacanal. After exploring the villa’s lumi-nous volumes, we set sail downstream,sprawling on the vessel’s front deck towatch the Veneto roll by. Cyclists purralong the towpaths; dragonflies scootacross lily-pads; behind the bulrushes,ramshackle boathouses heighten theWind in the Willows spell.

We slide between the factories of thePorto Marghera industrial zone as ifbidding farewell to the material world,then sail out into the lagoon. Soon weare in Venice’s Giudecca canal, theleisurely pace of our cruiser — just eightknots — barely raising a ripple ofthe motondoso(wavemotion)sodanger-ous for the city’s foundations. Only therowers, standing upright in signatureVenetian style, move through the watermoreslowly.

Sealed within the silvery-blue prismof sea and sky, it’s hard to believe thatbehind the waterfront hundreds ofthousands of people are crowded in thenarrow streets. But Venice is underassault from 27m tourists a year. WhenCalzolaio arrived, its residents num-bered 100,000. Today the figure hasfallen to around 60,000, as localsmigrate to terra firma in search of jobs,house prices and infrastructure thathave not been fatally skewed by hordesofvisitors.Veniceneeds tourismbutof adifferent kind: small-scale, sustainable,

intelligent. Initiatives such as Lagu-nalonga could set a precedent for abrighter future.

Thanks to Calzolaio’s connections, wehave a mooring for a few hours withinthe Arsenale, the medieval shipyardusually off-limits to private boats. Aftertying up beneath the watchtower, ourhost pours his guests a glass of BrumBrum, a peppery Cava from a vineyardnearPordenone.

When we nudge our way out into theopen water at sunset, it is easy to imag-ine ourselves at the prow of one of thegalleys whose prowess once made Ven-ice the most powerful state in the west-ern world. Here and there on outlyingislands abandoned fortifications testifytotherepublic’swar-scarredhistory.

Yet to voyage through the lagoon atthis hour is to enter a metaphysicaldimension: the air is still gauzy withheat, thewater like liquidglass.Only theflap of a cormorant launching itself off abricole — one of the wooden tripods thatmark out the navigational channels —breaksthestillness.

i / DETAILS

Rachel Spence was a guest of Lagunalonga(lagunalonga.it), which offers a week’s trip for upto six people, including all meals on board, from€8,000. Most excursions, such as museum visits,cycling, catamaran sailing, rowing a traditionalVenetian boat, and airport transfers, are alsoincluded. The trips start in March next year andrun until December

us all to silence, the only sounds thewhirr of the cicadas and the clink ofmasts. By now, after eating as we cruise,we have moored at Sant’Elena on theeastern tip of the city. A new marinawith space for 150 vessels, it is the firststep in a development whose plansinclude a hotel and a covered Miami-styleartmarket.

The next morning, I wonder if such acosmopolitan vision can become reality.Untouched by tourism, Sant’Elena is asleepy enclave. At 8am, only the pad ofrunners disturbs the pine-dotted parkthat fronts the lagoonandthecafé-bar isa dialect-only zone. Yet it is the childrenbeing born in these streets who aregrowing up to abandon their hometown. The new marina might offeropportunities to luresomeintostaying.

After feisty espressos — with coffeebought from Venice’s celebrated Torre-fazioneCannaregio,wherethebeansareroasted and ground before your eyes —we set sail for Lazzaretto Nuovo. Sur-rounded by a brick wall softened bythicketsofashandhawthorn, this islandalso testifies to the way locals are takingthefuture intotheirownhands.

Inhabited since the Bronze Age, by1975 the island was deserted. Then agroup of volunteers, the Ekos Club,gained permission to renovate it. Ourguide leads us through an avenue of200-year-old mulberry trees into along, red-brick building which was builtas a quarantine space in the 15th cen-tury, when Venice was at the zenith ofhertradingempire.Thentheplaguewasa constant danger so all those whoarrived by ship were required, alongwith their merchandise, to spend 40days on Lazzaretto Nuovo before enter-ingthecityproper.

The building is a repository of illumi-natingobjects—fromRomanamphoraeto the long-nosed mask stuffed withherbs the plague doctor used to wear.But it is the writing on the walls that cat-apults us back into another era. Fromwhat thegoodswere, towheretheyweredestined,plusmyriadgnomicmessages,those medieval merchants scribbledtheir thoughts down in a babel oftongues including Hebrew, Arabic andMasonic symbols. In all my years in thecity I have never felt such an intimatebondwiththeresidentsof timespast.

That near-mystical connection toVenice’s roots is ever-present in thelagoon. I feel it as I watch young boysleap into the water from the roof of thevaporetto (water bus) station on theisland of Sant’Erasmo. It’s there as wepotter about on Bacan, a scruffy archi-pelago of sandbanks, alongside Vene-tians who come here in their boats toswim, sunbathe and gather clams. “Mygrandma used to come here and put herdeckchair on the sand and her toes inthe water,” recalls our photographerGiacomo Cosua, with a smile. “But youhavetobecarefulbecausethebeachdis-appearsathightide.”

Yet this peaceful waterworld hasnever been more under threat. Jumpinginto the water off Bacan, I struggled toswim against a current stronger than Ihad ever known. Some Venetiansbelieve these new rapid streams arecausedbytheMoseworks.

Our final visit is to San Francesco delDeserto, a monastery island inaccessi-ble by vaporetto. As our guide, a monkin a brown robe, guides us through thecomplex of cloisters and chapels, hetells us that, after a spell in the HolyLand, St Francis hitched a lift home toItaly with the Venetians. Pausing to prayin the lagoon, his worship was disturbedby twittering birds. When they obeyedhis request for silence, he founded themonastery.

As he finishes the tale I ask him howlonghehasbeenhere.

“Three years,” he replies, adding thathecouldbemovedonatanytime.

In silence, we gaze out at the steel-blue prairies of water and the barenewiththeirpurplecloaksofsea lavender.

“You’ll be sad to leave this place,”Iventure.

He shakes his head. “You mustn’t getattachedtothings.”

An egret takes flight out of the reeds,its legs slicing the air like calligraphy.Perhaps I should read it as a message toask for divine help before disembark-ing. God can’t stop me from missing thelagoon but he might arrange for me tocomebacknextyear.

Venice needs tourismbut of a different kind:small-scale, sustainableand intelligent

LagunalongaFor aslideshowwith morepictures go toft.com/venice

LazzarettoNuovo

Sant’Erasmo

San Francescodel Deserto

Lido

VillaMalcontenta

Brentacanal Guidecca

canal

Arsenale

Sant’Elena

PortMarghera

VEN I C E

5 km

Clockwise frommain: childrenjump from thewater-busstation onthe island ofSant’Erasmo;a canal onBurano; the boatmoored atSant’Erasmo;stopping forlunch at arestaurant inMurano; a visitto San Francescodel DesertoGiacamo Cosua

SEPTEMBER 12 2015 Section:Weekend Time: 10/9/2015 - 17:42 User: stokest Page Name: WKD7, Part,Page,Edition: WKD, 7, 1