The island of Burano, of delicious colors and home to delicate lace, is a short ferry ride from Venice.
By ROBERT N. JENKINS
Published July 13, 2003
Through the arch is one of Burano’s small residential streets, lined by colorfully painted homes that are an island landmark.
[Times photos: Robert N. Jenkins]
Small fishing boats are tied along one of the narrow canals that crisscross Burano.
BURANO, Italy - A few minutes after stepping off the ferry to this island, you start looking for the people with clipboards, the ones asking your opinion of the brilliant colors into which every house and shop has been dipped. This must be where paint manufacturers challenge the sun to fade their most audacious colors.
Wonder what a 40- by 25-foot wall of raspberry looks like? Look at the house over there, between the tangerine and lemon, just across from the chocolate and blueberry. You want to lick this village.
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"Boo-RAH-no? Take the big boat, over there," advises the water-bus ticket-seller near Venice's famed St. Mark's Square.
The boat is a two-deck, blocky thing, unlike the fairly sleek vaporettos that move passengers about the islands. The boat is headed first for the beach island of Lido, then the little-visited island of Torcello, and 70 minutes after the lines are pulled in, Burano.
This Sunday morning the boat is crammed with couples pushing strollers, people carrying foldup beach chairs, pretty young things and too-cool guys wearing the darkest of shades bobbing to the beat coming from headphones connected to iPods. There are tourists, too, clutching maps and guidebooks.
The only passenger holding what looks like the flag from a golf hole flashes a lovely smile when asked if she is leading a tour group with this red pennant on a 5-foot-tall stick.
"I did this for my friends," says Nelo, who doesn't give her last name. "Bars, restaurants, when I choose one that is good, I give them flag and put dowm some green, because we have not so much green in Venice."
This flag bears a message: No. 18 Nelo's Tasty Urban Golfing. The little slip of paper she hands me has a color photo of the traditional view of Venice, from the lagoon looking toward St. Mark's. Printed on it is the message:
in the long summer of 2003 in bella venezia 18 holes around the city, giudecca and lido for your senses very pleasure . . . maybe the largest golfcours . . . for sure the more spacious pavilion and independent
"I am architect and artist," Nelo says, "but I think I better stick with artist: There is not much building in Venice, and nothing new."
The boat docks at Lido, and almost everyone gets off, including the charming Nelo carrying her red flag. Hollywood, were you paying attention?
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"Boo-RAH-no! Boo-RAH-no!" shouts the muscular young deckhand on the boat. As the few remaining passengers step ashore, he darts among them to fill a plastic water jug at the fountain in the park by the dock. He hops back aboard, slides closed the railing that lets passengers get off and on, unloops the hawser tying the ship to dock, and the boat chugs back toward bella venezia.
The 31 flavors of Burano cover an island about 6 miles away. The men have broad shoulders and thick forearms from hauling in fishing nets. Their wives and daughters operate tourist shops or embroider or, much less frequently now, make lace. For centuries, the Burano has been distinguished by its contrary signatures: loudly colored houses and dainty needlework.
The island is all narrow streets, tinier alleys and canals just wide enough to tie up narrow fishing boats on each side. The houses are built in rows, with few side yards and precious little space for privacy.
That's what caused one resident to reach across the alley this morning and pound a broom handle against the wooden window shutters of a neighbor, protesting the volume of the rap music pouring from that house.
Bam bam bam, went the broom handle, without success. Bam BAM BAMMM!
However, that is the only jarring note in the ice-cream parlor village. Dozens of residents, and more than a few visitors, set up small tables in the dockside park for picnics. The maitre'd of the well-recommended Al Gatto Nero-Da Ruggero cheerfully turns away potential customers because the entire canalside restaurant, a few blocks from the tourist-filled main square, is reserved for lunch.
That means more business for Da Romano, which for 56 years has been on the plaza. Operated by the fourth generation of its founding family, Da Romano has a menu that is an eye-opener as much for its illustrations as for its dishes: Reproduced on the menu are the autographs of such customers as authors Ernest Hemingway ("To Romano, a friend of the arts - too few of them now"), Alberto Moravia, Charlie Chaplin, Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, Giorgio Armani and Federico Fellini.
The shrimp risotto, for about $15, is pretty impressive, too.
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Just around the corner from the restaurant, and across the plaza from the old church with its dizzily leaning bell tower, is the Scuola del Merletti. For 98 years, it was the School of the Lacemakers, a government effort to preserve a once-legendary skill and to rejuvenate the island's sagging economy.
In the 16th century, the lace made in and around Venice was so prized throughout Europe, it was known as punta in aria, points (or stitches) in air. But there was much competition to decorate the finery of the well-to-do. Then, Napoleon conquered the thousand-year-old city-state of Venice in 1797, significantly reducing its status. Machine-made lace and embroidery further reduced the area's share of the market.
Handmade lace, exquisite but time-consuming to create, became too expensive to support any sizable number of artisans. Burano slumped.
In 1872, the government created the school to teach again the graceful art. The school was closed in 1970 and was later converted to a museum. Now, village women demonstrate the work to tourists in the museum, where cases display marvelous pieces of handiwork dating nearly 400 years.
Though shopkeepers say vaguely that hundreds of islanders still sew, most of them are embroidering, which is quicker and far easier on the eyesight. Prices in the shop L'Orchidea demonstrate the commercial value of the two skills:
A standard linen tablecloth with colored-thread embroidery is about $193; the same cloth with an insert of Burano lacework is about $1,180. And an all-lace tablecloth, which took four groups of women three years to make, is about $7,080.
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The boat moves slowly away from the dock, a few hundred yards from the square, the leaning church tower, the lace museum, Da Romano. Visible for several minutes, though, are the houses, an occurrence said to be why they are painted so many vivid colors: to help the fishermen spot their homes as they motor in with their catch.
Some less-charitable people, living in glamorous Venice, say the full-palette treatment is there simply to brighten dreary winter days on Burano.
