ITALIAN JOURNEY – PROGRAMME 2

VENICE – ARCHEOLOGY 

Professor Gerolamo Fazzini is an archeologist working on one of the smaller, less well-known islands in the Venetian lagoon – the New Lazaretto.

This uninhabited  island is not on many maps, because it belongs to the Italian military.

But now, under the professor’s supervision, volunteers from the “Archeoclub d’Italia” (Italian Archeology Club) are studying and restoring it.

Gerolamo Fazzini: Hello guys, hi!

Volunteers: Hi!

Gerolamo Fazzini: This is Federica, who is continuing  with the survey, the sketches of the floors of  the houses.

James: So what was there here?

Federica: This is the area where the sailors who landed with their ships lived.  They lived in these little houses that we are drawing at the moment.  This was the day area, where they cooked on their stoves.  We presume that there would have been an upper floor where they went at night-time, where they slept.

James: What is the most important thing that you have found in terms of the island’s history?

Federica: Well, no single discovery is more important than the others.  The one characteristic is that the things we have found cover a very long timescale.  Ranging from a late bronze age arrow tip to coins from the last century.  So all these finds show that the island was continously inhabited for a very long period of time.

James: Thanks, Federica.

Federica: You’re welcome! 

Gerolamo Fazzini: OK, so now, if you like, we can go here, into the Teson Grande, where I can show you writings of the ships’ crews, who came here for quarantine.

James: What is this building?

Gerolamo Fazzini: This is the Teson Grande, where the mechandise was kept in quarantine.

James: What period is it from?

Gerolamo Fazzini: It’s is from the second half of the 16th century.

James: It’s amazing!  I would never have imagined that it would be so well preserved! It’s huge!

Gerolamo Fazzini: It has been restored by the Architectural Monuments Department.

James: Was it full of merchandise?

Gerolamo Fazzini: Yes. These are all the open arches where the porters known as the bastarzi had the job of moving merchandise outside, into the sun and treating them with aromatic herbs, with the fumes of juniper and rosemary.

James: What historical significance does this writing have?

Gerolamo Fazzini: It is vital evidence of the trade that the Venetians had throughout the entire Mediterranean region.  This was the Venetian colonial empire, at the peak of its greatest expansion, at the end of the 16th century, not long after the battle of Lepanto.  That is when it was!