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1 The world. Capo de mile paron de nessun. El Picolo. Sborada picola.
2 Do ghe nà anca i cani. Do ghe n'à anca i gati.
3 Crying. To hell with the weeping.
4 Leto. He has gone to bed. The caress.
5 Man. A full hand. A single hand.
6 Can. Fidelity. Mario.
7 S.Severo. A remengo S.Severo. (Because in S.Severo there are prisons).
8 Culo. El buso del culo.
9 Pare. Nine pare. Xe qua mio pare.
10 Polenta. Un bel tagier de polenta. A good polenta. Magna sariese.
11 Poles. Pali de la riva. The legs of the men. S.Martin tegnosi.
12 Soldiers. Here are the soldiers.
13 Judas. The point of Judas.
14 Fogo. Scale. The smoke has fallen. Fire in the cup. I xe su la scala.
15 Saint Lucia.
16 Done. Xe here and done.
17 That stuff.
18 Blood. Sangueto (blood). Marquis (menstruo).
19 Anzolo grando.
20 Countryside. I xe andai in campagna o andemo in campagna.
21 Wine. Bring some wine.
22 Anarete, pepolete.
23 Piavolo. S.Zanipolo.
24 Madalena pentita. Madalena ti fa pezo.
25 Nadal. Omo nuo.
26 Monea. Who is it that makes a monk? Xe qua el numaro de la monea.
27 Oseleto. Here is the rodent. Xe qua quela roba dei omeni.
28 Mezo Quartuzzo (measure of wine).
29 Madona (mother-in-law). Xe qua to Madona.
30 Gato. Birth. She has given birth.
31 Chitara. Cortelo. La chitara de sior Biasio. (Similarity between the pronunciation of the number and the sound of the guitar: trentun, trentun.
32 Colombo. S.Marcuola.
33 I ani de Cristo.
34 Una svanzega vecia (Austrian lira of money 34).
35 Svanzega nova (from 35 soldi).
36 Aqua salsa. Do you want some salsa water? It's here.
37 Death resusitada.
38 S.Maria Formosa.
39 Gallows. Anzolo picolo. Go up the pitchfork, it's here.
40 Holy water. Vovi.
41 Saint Margarita. Queen.
42 Peocio.
43 St Mark's.
44 Road. In the street.
45 Priests. Those bogies of priests.
46 S.Lonardo.
47 S.Luca protetor dei bechi o dei marii.
48 Holy Apostles. The Gobi of the Holy Apostles. Provisional Government.
49 Mio fio. Raw meat.
50 Dead.
51 Basimelo e no dighelo a nissun.
52 Sea. Vaca. However empty it may be, it is always the sea. Vaca sta gamba (pinching his leg).
53 S.Salvador.
54 Shit. Shit A nice shit. Neta and s-cieta shit.
55 S.Piero de Castelo. Do man.
56 Sorze. S.Trovaso.
57 The galina.
60 Fansiula. Putela.
61 S.Barnaba.
62 Gold.
63 I ani de la Madona. Wedding.
64 Siora Nene.
65 Biancaria.
66 The horns of the bechi.
67 The Frari.
68 Balcon. Bridge. I'm in the middle of a bridge. The dirty chopstick.
69 Up and down Calabria. Marriage in colara.
70 Ciesa. Putelo. Fansiulo
81 Desperation. Gran desperazion. Desparai.
72 Gran Maravegia.
73 Thief. Thieving brute. This is the thief.
74 S.Maria Zobenigo.
75 Baso. A baseto and then in nana.
76 S.Zaninovo.
77 The legs of the cooks. The legs of the women.
78 Bonigolo. S.Lio.
79 Kings. Monarchs. Xe qua o vien i regnanti.
80 St. Jeremiah
81 S.Felise. I baloneri de S. Felise (all the parishes of Venice have a nickname for the people, but the parish of S. Felice was given this insulting title. Baloneri means herniosis. Scrotal hernia).
82 Saint Ternita.
83 One gobo.
84 Bells. Campaniel. Pan moro.
85 Pan bianco.
86 S.Lorenzo with all its dirty doings.
87 The goose on the goose.
88 The tete de quaro. Baloni del papa. Coioni del papa. (Tete = udders). Quaro, mirror plates after flattening. The number 88 represents with its curves the roundness of the female breast, but being without relief, therefore flat, it is said: de quaro. The phrase is equivalent to a woman without breasts: example 'Sanse ga le tete de quaro'. To a female who has large, firm breasts, one says with wonder: 'Che afar'. "Che te te fidi o che no te fidi' (playing on the various meanings of the words te tete).
89 La Crose. Tola.
90 Great people. The ninth. The oldest. Andemo in gondola.
 Taken from "Giochi e indovinelli popolari veneziani", D.G. Bernoni, Filippi editore, Venezia.

Venetian Smorfia, Venice curiosities and guide map at

Tracing the history of one of the most typical dishes of the Venetian culinary tradition, the baccalà mantecato, means coming across tasty anecdotes of customs and language of which the long history of the Republic of St. Mark is full.
To talk about baccalà, which up until after the war was still being beaten on the masegni delle Zattere by the labourers of the burci and trabaccoli, from which derives the saying done, cani e bacalà, no xe bon se no xe pestà, you have to go back to 25 April 1431 when a Venetian ship full of spices left the island of Crete under the command of sea captain Piero Querini for the North Seas. When it reached the English Channel, however, the voyage took a turn for the worse as a strong, stormy wind carried the ship for days across the seas until, having cut the mast, it lost its sails and rudder and the 68 sailors boarded lifeboats. However, only 14 of them managed to find shelter on the uninhabited rock Sandoy in the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway.
After a few days, local fishermen spotted them and brought them to safety on the island of Roest, which Venetian sailors later described as a paradise on earth. The Venetians were deeply impressed by the great freedom and simplicity of their customs. In the 12 houses that housed 120 people, everyone lived naked and had no problem with the presence of guests, so much so that Querini recounts: "The women remained naked and slept with the foreigners when their husbands went fishing. These people live marriage as an indissoluble sacrament and live without any lust of their own, nor do they relieve the stimulus of the flesh.
After 101 days in the hospitable village, most of the sailors decided to return with 60 dried stockfish. On the way back Querini passed through Trondheim, Vadstena and London where he was a guest of the then powerful Venetian community on the Thames. From there after 24 days on horseback the Captain da Mar finally reached Venice on 12 October 1432. On his return to the lagoon, in the detailed report that he made to the Maggior Consiglio Querini certainly did not forget to talk about stockfish, that species of fish that the Norwegians dried in the wind until it became as hard as a stick and then beat it to make a butyro with a species to give it flavour.
Having told the anecdote that made this ancient recipe known to the Venetians, we now move on to the linguistic story. Cod was called by the populations of Northern Europe stock (stick) fish or vish (fish), while the word used by the Venetians was baccalà due to assonance with Portuguese bacalhau and Spanish bacalao, terms evidently derived from the Latin baculus, which means stick. The Spanish bacalao, however, referred to that species of cod which, although it originates from the Arctic Ocean, does not go to Norway but to Labrador and Newfoundland, where it was fished and preserved in salt by the Spanish and Portuguese. The name of a different recipe was then commonly used to define codfish made Norwegian style, an oddity that goes along with the word mantecato (cream), also of Spanish origin. Baccalà mantecato therefore means stockfish cream.

The Epopee of the Stockfish, Venice curiosities & map at

It was in the year 17 ... when a caravan of travellers brought a real elephant to Venice to be exhibited for a fee as a wonder of nature. The enthusiasm aroused in the population by the great animal caused large numbers of spectators to flock to the riva degli Schiavoni, where the carnival was set up. During the night, however, the pachyderm, perhaps annoyed by the noisy attention, perhaps excited by the salty-iodine air, decided to regain its freedom. He tore off the chains that bound him and broke through the wall of the hut, and allowed himself a "tour de Venise a la nuit", spreading panic as he passed.
After wandering about for quite a long time, pursued by the Republic's arquebusiers and halberdiers who only succeeded in irritating him further, he smashed through the door of the church of Sant'Antonino (or perhaps Sant'Iseppo) in Castello with one blow from his arse and entered the building. Unlucky as the well-known dog in the church, a tombstone gave way under his weight, trapping one of his paws. He was then bundled up again in stronger chains and taken back to his menagerie.
The reaction of the Venetian magistrates was immediate, and with a very urgent procedure they decreed the death sentence for the rebellious and sacrilegious beast. The sentence was carried out publicly in St. Mark's Square, by means of a cannon shot in the forehead, in front of a crowd of spectators who did not even have to pay for the ticket. This episode inspired the satirical poet Pietro Buratti for his "Elefanteide" (Marciana collocation: LEO A 0616), a poem of over 800 lines composed in octaves of endecasyllables (to underline its epic character). Buratti places the episode in 1815, and uses it to mock certain public officials and the artificiality of the customs of the time, making the elephant an emblem of a spontaneous vis naturalis unjustly persecuted.

Sad Story of the Elephant, Venice curiosities & guide map at

The Serenissima did not limit its maritime activities to trade. From time to time it also provided foreign states with charter hire of warships in exchange for part of the spoils and freedom to trade tax-free in the conquered territories. On the occasion of Constantinople's victory over the King of Tyre, thanks also to the Venetian galleys, the sea captains found themselves taking back to Venice, as part of the booty, three huge monolithic granite columns, each weighing several hundred tons. Legend has it that they were carried on three separate ships and that one of them capsized while preparing to land the cargo. The shipwrecked column had to sink so deep into the muddy seabed that "looking for it twenty years after it had sunk, a master appointed for the purpose was able to probe the seabed with a long pole, but it could not be found".
Somehow it was possible to unload the cargo of the other two ships, and the columns were laid down on the shore of St. Mark's Square, where they remained horizontally for over a century, since there was not enough strength to raise them vertically, as befits columns.
It was only thanks to the ingenuity of Nicoló Barattieri, a builder from Bergamo, that the megalithic columns were able to find more dignified accommodation. The proto-engineer (the same who invented the counterweight elevator that allowed the construction of St Mark's bell tower, the tallest tower of the time) blocked one end of the column, tying bundles of ropes to the other, which, passing along the shaft of the column itself, were to be firmly fixed to the ground on the other side of the Piazza. These ropes were then wet. As is well known, a wet rope increases in diameter and decreases in length. The traction exerted by the shortening of the bundles of ropes was sufficient to raise the head of the column by a few centimetres. Wooden wedges were then placed under the column and the ropes were replaced with dry ones that were proportionately shorter and the 'water on the ropes' operation was repeated. In a short time, the two surviving columns were reflected in the Bacino di San Marco. The admiration for the expedient was such that the Serenissimo Governo decided to reward Barattieri by granting him the only licence to run a gambling den for the game of dice, which until then had been strictly prohibited throughout the city. Barattieri was assigned the very ground in St. Mark's Square between the two columns in order to exercise this less noble but very profitable trade.

The Columns of Marco and Todaro, Venice curiosities & map

In the baptistery of St Mark's basilicae, the altartable is a stone on which is told that Jesus sermonized. This stone was brought to Venice by the doge Domenico Michiel in 1126.

The Stone on which Jesus sermonized

In the early years of the 14th century, a number of young Venetian nobles, led by Bajamonte Tiepolo, hatched a conspiracy against the Doge and made a night-time rendezvous in St Mark's Square to penetrate the palace, assassinate Pietro Gradenigo, who wore the ducal horn, and seize power. The conspirators were betrayed, and in the square they were confronted by the armigers who turned them away through the mercerie. Legend has it that an old woman, who lived in a house adjacent to the Clock Tower (which would only be built two centuries later), decided to help punish the rebels and, leaning out of her balcony, threw a stone mortar at the head of the rebels' standard-bearer, killing him. To compensate for this gesture of loyalty to the Doge, the Serenissima decreed that the old woman, and all her descendants, would be given free accommodation for which she had hitherto paid rent. It seems that the old woman's descendants lived there free of charge until she died out in the 20th century.

The Old Woman and the Mortar, Venice curiosities & map at

Probably the first woman in the world to graduate was Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Loredan Piscopia, a Venetian noblewoman.
Elena Lucrezia was born in 1646 into a noble family that already boasted Doges and Cardinals of the Republic of Venice. From an early age she showed great intelligence and sensitivity.
Her father was an esteemed Procurator of St Mark's, which gave her access to an excellent education. Elena learned Greek and Latin and studied Natural Sciences, Geography, Astronomy and Mathematics. The young scholar spoke Israeli, Spanish, French and Arabic, and was given the nickname Oraculum Septi Lingue. For her age she was an extraordinary student.
Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Loredan Piscopia attained a profound knowledge in mathematics under the protective wing of Maestro Rinaldini.
This extraordinary woman studied only to satisfy her thirst for knowledge and truth. Fulfilling her father's ambition, she agreed to be presented at the College of the University of Padua for a degree in Theology. Her participation in the course in Theology was denied her by some priests because she was a woman. At that time the study of theological subjects was the prerogative of men.
Elena Lucrezia was admitted to the degree course in Philosophy. Although the theological academic environment was a male prerogative, no one could deny the young woman's extraordinary talents in Philosophy.
In 1678, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Loredan Piscopia graduated in Philosophy, the first female graduate in the world.&nbsp; She discussed her thesis on Philosophy in Padua, in the presence of hundreds of spectators.
In the last years of her short life Elena devoted herself to charity work, joining the Benedictine Oblates (an Order of Catholic nuns), although she did not take her vows.
Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Loredan Piscopia died in Padua at the age of 38 in 1684, and was buried in the church of Santa Giustina. In memory of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Loredan Piscopia there is a sculpture at the University of Padua, a stained glass window at Vassar University USA and a memorial in her house in Venice, now the city's Town Hall.
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