The oar and the licence: Venice's first woman gondolier

Venice's gondoliers are one of the city's best-known and most traditional trades, with a guild whose licences have historically passed through families. In 2010, Al Jazeera and other outlets reported that Giorgia Boscolo had become the first woman to receive a full gondolier's licence, after more than eight centuries of the profession being almost entirely male.

According to the reports, she followed her father, Dante, who had been a gondolier for around forty years. She had completed a training course introduced by the city council in 2007 and passed a demanding exam; earlier reports in 2009 had noted that she passed the test, with her name added to the official register the following year. Reporting describes a course of several months and hundreds of hours.

Later reporting, including a feature published by the news aggregator inkl, has suggested that she remained the only woman licensed as a gondolier for many years. That detail should be checked against current records before it is repeated.

A gondola ride is a visit to a long craft tradition: the boat is asymmetrical, the oar rests on a carved wooden rowlock, and the route through the canals is learned over years. If you take a ride, agree the price and duration in advance, and consider the quieter side canals rather than the busiest routes.