• The gondola and the speedboat: Venice as a crucible of culture | Thinkpiece | Architectural Review

    https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/the-gondola-and-the-speedboat-venice-as-a-crucible-of-culture/10031111.article

    As a melting pot of art and culture, Venice has historically been a source of inspiration for many

    On 21 March 1945, Wing Commander George Westlake led the one and only authorised Second World War air raid on Venice. Operation Bowler had been planned by Air Vice-Marshal ‘Pussy’ Foster. He named it so because he knew that if the city itself was damaged, he and Westlake would be ‘bowler hatted’ or returned, that is, to civilian life. The target was the docks that – now that the RAF had made key northern Italian railway lines and major roads impassable – were the one seemingly sure way the Germans could supply their occupying armies, along canals lined with villas by Palladio.

    Diving near vertically from 10,000ft, Westlake led more than a hundred Mustangs and Kittyhawks to their target. The operation was a resounding success. One aircraft was shot down, its pilot rescued, while not a single Venetian life was lost, nor, aside from the odd shattered window, a Venetian building damaged outside the docks. My friend and former AR contributor, Tudy Sammartini, a future pupil of Carlo Scarpa at the time and one of the city’s most engaging conservationists from the great flood of 1966, told me that Venetians crowded on rooftops to watch the raid. ‘It was intense’, she said, ‘but we cried, Bravo!’

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