The gondola term comes from an unsure etymology; perhaps it comes from the greek "kuntelas" (rowing-boat)or "gonda-koni" (floating vase), or perhaps from the latin "cymbula"(small boat).
We can find the first official testimony of the use of that term in a 1094 A.D. ordinance in which Doge Vitale Falier relieved people residents in Loreo (Rovigo, about 70 miles from Venice) from the supplying of "decorated gondolas".
Due to its characteristics of handyness and speed, the use of the gondola grew up until it reached the maximum splendour in the 16th Century; nobles used to vie for embellish their boats of precious fabrics and very fine ornaments even made of solid gold.
To this same period belong the first iconographical testimonies from which the original look of that time gondolas can be reconstructed.
The defeat suffered in 1509 from the Cambrai League from one side obliged Venice to the restitution and renouncement of the power of cities and territories to the Kings of France, Spain, Austria and to the Pope; from the other side it leaded to a restictive situation so that the Doge put very severe brakes not only to the shape and the uses that had been done of the gondolas till that moment, but also to the permission itselves.
CURIOSITIES
Some people think that the typical black colour of the gondola is the outcome of a vow made by the Venetians to defeat the plague.
In 1630 A.D. , considerating that the population had been decimated from the terrible infectious disease, Contarini (the Venetian Doge) decided to have a temple to the Virgin Mary built if the plague had stopped and, according to that beliefs, ordered that all gondolas were to be painted black as mourning sign.
One year later the plague was defeated and the building of the "Basilica della Salute" (where "Salute" means "Health") started, but from that moment gondolas stayed black in memory of the more than eighty thousand people dead.
