The master of the house
My grandmother Angelina, bless her heart, was a rich source of information regarding life in Italy, and particularly in Venice at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth.
I would sit near her, she was always huddled in a comfortable leather chair by the window, her rosary wrapped around her wrist, she was practically blind after her eighty fifth birthday, and I would probe into her memories and wisdom.
Sometimes she would tell me tales from the Bible and sometimes she would describe significant events that she recalled with particular clarity.
Among them was the day the campanile di San Marco, the imposing bell tower in San Marco square collapsed. It was July 1902 and the population had been warned that strange moans were coming from the tower, almost like the sounds of death rattles.
The population in the area was asked to move, and on the 14th, at 9:30 in the morning an enormous rumble was heard as far as the several islands of the lagoon. Some people thought it was an earthquake, since the entire San Marco area shook.
The campanile had towered over the piazza San Marco for over one thousand years, and its falling was like the end of the world for the Venetians.
My grandmother went on to describe what they saw upon approaching the collapse site.The dust was so thick in the summer morning air that you could barely see the faces of those distraught citizens frantically moving around.
Some people were crying as though they had lost their home or a close relative. The ensuing news about this extraordinary occurrence was fantastic. Someone had commented: “The master of the House (El Paron de Casa, this was the name given to the campanile by the Venetians) first warned us and then died without harming anyone in its city”.
In fact the structure had just sat down on itself without affecting the surrounding buildings.
The other marvelous happening was the gold Archangel who had crowned the top of the tower for over four hundred years was found in a prone position in front of the basilica, intact.
Again, miraculously, the main bell tower, called Marangona, the largest in the world, forged in Constantinople around 400 A.D. and taken by the Venetians during the crusades, was found also intact in the rubble.
The most incredible fact, however, was the finding, in the rubble, of a Venetian crystal goblet that was also intact, and that the chief bell ringer had never seen anywhere in the campanile.
A new campanile was built and completed by 1912, the gold plated Archangel reigning from the top, and the Marangona bell hanging in the bell fry.
And that is the one I remember looking up to as a child, in awe of its height, over ninety meters, and thinking it was falling, the illusion caused by fluffy clouds sailing over it in the blue sky.The Master of the House, El Paron de Casa, is there in the same spot where the original was, guarding Venice for at least another thousand years.
Alberto Sbrizzi
10631 Vinedale Street, Sun Valley, CA 91352 - Phone (818) 767-3413 - Fax: (818) 767-1410
