Vaporetto
Tronchetto 33

Alberto Toso Fei narrates...

“In the beginning, there was just one vaporetto, the “Regina Margherita,” which started service on the Grand Canal in 1881 during the “Geography Congress,” marked with the number 1. It came into life thanks to Alessandro Finella, a Piedmontese stationed in Venice, who was inspired by the French bateaux-mouches, already navigating the Seine. In fact, the Regina Margherita was built in France, thanks to the “Compagnie des Bateaux Omnibus de Venise” in Paris, which launched another eight vaporetti the following year.

Sometime after, in 1890, the “Società Veneta Lagunare” extended service between the islands and the mainland, and in 1903 the municipality took over internal steam navigation services, creating the “Municipal Company for Internal Navigation” (ACNI, later ACNIL in 1930 after a merger with Società Veneta Lagunare). In 1978, the company became the “Azienda del Consorzio Trasporti Veneziano” (ACTV), still in operation today under that name.

But don’t think that this way of transport, now iconic and unquestionably linked to Venetian panoramas has been accepted peacefully: gondoliers and other boatmen initially resisted the advent of motors. But it was only a matter of time: the “vaporetto,” with its unique name as distinctive as “gondola,” became the quintessential motorized vessel, destined to enter the imagination alongside all things typically Venetian”.