★ Festa del Redentore

01Lý do quan trọng

Of the several festivals Venice keeps, the Redentore is the one that is genuinely for Venetians. It has no international marketing, no ticket, no organizing body beyond the city and the parish, and its central act - eating dinner in a boat with your family while the sky is on fire - has not changed in any important way in four centuries. That gives it a different standing from Carnival or the Biennale, both of which are largely made of visitors. In our reading, it is also the single best night to be in Venice: the crowd is enormous but it is a local crowd, the whole event happens on water, and the fireworks over the Bacino di San Marco with the Salute and San Giorgio lit on either side are the finest urban firework display in Europe. Nothing about it requires money. The tables along the Zattere and the steps of the Giudecca cost nothing and see it as well as any boat.

02Tuần lễ xung quanh sự kiện

The Redentore is a weekend rather than a season, but it lands in the middle of the Venetian July, when the city is hot, full and at its least comfortable in the middle of the day. In the days before, the pontoon bridge is assembled across the Giudecca canal in sections, which is itself worth watching. On the Saturday the city imposes water-traffic restrictions across the Bacino and the Giudecca canal from the afternoon, moves vaporetto stops and runs a special night timetable; the last services on Saturday run through the small hours. Hotels are full and rates are at their July peak. Away from the water, the Biennale in odd years is open in the Giardini and the Arsenale, the Punta della Dogana and the Guggenheim carry the summer exhibitions, and the Lido - fifteen minutes by vaporetto - is where Venetians go to swim. Anyone staying on into the following week finds the city noticeably quieter by Wednesday.

03Thời điểm đến

Arrive on the Friday or by Saturday lunchtime. The bridge usually opens on Friday evening and crossing it at dusk with far fewer people is one of the pleasures of the weekend. Saturday afternoon is when positions are claimed along the Zattere and the Giudecca; if you want a place at the water's edge for the fireworks, be there by seven or eight with something to sit on. Stay through Sunday for the regattas and leave on Monday morning - Sunday evening departures are difficult because the whole city moves at once.

04Nơi lưu trú

The Giudecca is the obvious answer and the least obvious to visitors: it puts you on the right side of the bridge, on a quiet island with the church at its centre, five minutes from the Zattere by vaporetto and directly on the water for the fireworks. Dorsoduro, along the Zattere and around the Accademia, is the other prime position and the more convenient of the two. San Marco and Castello along the Riva degli Schiavoni face the basin and see the display head on, at the highest prices in the city. Cannaregio is the value choice and a twenty-minute walk from the water. Wherever you stay, a room or terrace facing south toward the basin is the thing worth paying for on this one weekend, and it should be asked about explicitly.

05Tiếp cận và tiếp đón

There is no ticket and no admission of any kind. The bridge, the church, the fondamente, the fireworks and the regattas are all free and public, and the Comune di Venezia publishes the programme and the water-traffic rules shortly before the weekend. What is sold is private: restaurants and hotels along the water sell dinner on their terraces for the Saturday night, boat operators and clubs sell places on chartered craft in the basin, and both go early and at a premium. The city's boat-mooring arrangements in the Bacino for the night are regulated and announced in the programme. Venice's separate day-visitor access fee may apply to non-staying visitors on designated days. No prices are quoted here because no organizer publishes any.

06Nơi diễn ra các hoạt động giao lưu

On the water, and on the stone edges of it. The Bacino di San Marco fills with rafted boats from the afternoon; the Zattere, the Giudecca fondamenta, the Punta della Dogana and the Riva degli Schiavoni carry the tables and the crowd on foot; the altane, the private roof terraces, hold the households that have them. After the fireworks a large part of the city walks or rows to the Lido to watch the sun come up on the beach, which is a genuine tradition rather than a story. On the Sunday the crowd is along the Giudecca canal for the regattas. The bacari of Cannaregio and Dorsoduro and the restaurants of the Giudecca take whatever is left of the evening.

07Hướng dẫn di chuyển

08Thông tin thực tiễn

09Lịch sử

The plague that reached Venice in 1575 killed something in the order of fifty thousand people over two years, a quarter to a third of the city, among them Titian. In September 1576 the Doge Alvise I Mocenigo vowed to build a church to the Redeemer if the city were delivered, and to visit it in procession every year. The plague was declared over in July 1577; Palladio was commissioned, and the church on the Giudecca was consecrated in 1592. The votive procession across a temporary bridge has been made annually since, interrupted only by war and, in 2020, by the pandemic, when the fireworks were cancelled and the religious observance kept. The fireworks themselves are a later addition, and the boat-borne dinner grew with them. In 1989 Pink Floyd played a floating concert in the basin on Redentore weekend to an audience reported at some 200,000, an episode that caused enough damage and civic anger to reshape how Venice permits large events.

10Ai có mặt ở đây

Venetians and lagoon families above all - this is their festival and the boats in the basin are largely theirs; rowing club members, who compete in Sunday's regattas and crew the decorated craft; residents of the Veneto mainland who come in for the night; the Italian domestic summer crowd; and a comparatively small number of foreign visitors, most of whom find it by accident rather than by planning. The proportion of locals to visitors is the highest of any event in this calendar.