Venice City Hall announced this week that it is looking for new gondoliers. Job requirements include age 18 or over, high school education, knowledge of swimming and possession of a medical certificate proving “a healthy and robust constitution.”
Aspiring gondoliers must enroll in a training course – Arte del Gondoliere or the Art of the Gondolier. They will only be eligible for this if they prove they can row or at least show signs of having what it takes to develop their skills.
“Being able to move the gondola is the most important thing,” said Andrea Balbi, president of the Venice gondoliers’ association. “The pre-selection process helps us understand this and then we start the training.”
The training process is just as rigorous. Trainees must undergo 30 hours of theoretical lessons, during which they will learn the waterway equivalent of the road code.
They will also receive instruction in English and French and study the history, art, and culture of Venice, with a special focus on how the city and its waterways were built.
Afterward, they will have 10 hours of practical training, which involves rowing a gondola with a single oar under the guidance of a master gondolier.
The profession of gondolier has been a cornerstone of Venice since 1094. For centuries, the 11-meter-long boats were the primary form of transport in the city, serving the lower echelons of society before becoming a favored option for aristocrats when their preferred mode of transport—horse-drawn carriages—was banned from the narrow streets in the 14th century.
In the 16th century, there were around 10,000 gondolas in Venice.
Today, there are only 433 gondoliers. The profession was once exclusively male, but it is now open to anyone who is an EU citizen.
Giorgia Boscolo became the first female gondolier in 2009, and today there are 14 women.
With approximately 30 million visitors per year, gondoliers are in high demand in Venice. However, finding new recruits is less about serving a huge number of tourists and more about preserving the profession, according to Balbi.
“There is a generational shift: people are retiring and need to be replaced,” he said. “So we conduct training courses whenever necessary. People who apply for this job do so because they are in love with Venice and are committed to carrying on the traditions of the gondola and the city,” he explained.