For nearly five centuries, this "famous night" has been celebrated in Venice. With banquets, celebrations, fireworks, and a spirituality that, despite the passage of time, has never waned. It is the night of the Redeemer, which connects the Saturday and Sunday of the third weekend in July, and which has been celebrated annually in Venice for centuries. It commemorates, with religious celebrations abound, the end of a plague: the terrible plague of the 16th century, which in two years had wiped out almost a third of the Venetian population, 500,000 people. Among them, the famous painter Tiziano Vecellio.
The Palladian Sanctuary of the Redeemer
It was the summer of 1576, the epidemic was relentless, and the disease seemed invincible. In September of that year, the Senate of the Republic decided to ask for divine help, promising the construction of a large votive temple in the area of the Franciscan convent on the island of Giudecca – just as happened less than a century later with the Basilica of Our Lady of Health – dedicated to the Redeemer.
The project was entrusted to one of the greatest architects of the time, Andrea Palladio. The foundation stone was laid exactly a year later, in 1577, and the temple was consecrated in 1592. A sanctuary of great beauty, one of the most beautiful and well-known churches in Venice. As Giulio Lorenzetti writes in his famous guide "Venice and its Estuary," the Temple of the Redeemer "It is one of the grandest harmonious examples of Palladian religious architecture."
The votive bridge on boats
From the very beginning, Lorenzetti writes again, “It was obligatory that every year on the third Sunday of July, the lordship visit the Temple”. And this custom has never been interrupted, taking root in the hearts and traditions of Venetians. They have maintained their devotion with religious celebrations in the Palladian temple on the island of Giudecca, exceptionally connected to Venice—on this occasion and for only a few days—by a votive pontoon bridge spanning the Giudecca Canal. But while the religious celebrations marking the end of that now-so-distant plague have remained alive, the joy and festivities that characterized the first years since the pandemic's end have not been forgotten.
The "very famous night", with banquets on boats and fireworks
The grand celebration, thanks to the fact that it falls right in the heart of summer, takes place in St. Mark's Basin and the Giudecca Canal, which this evening, the third Saturday of July, are filled with richly decorated boats, accompanied by music and traditional dinners on board. The celebrations continue along the banks of the Giudecca with festive banquets and traditional menus: sardines "in saor," pasta and beans, stuffed duck, and the triumphant fruit of summer, watermelon. All this while awaiting, just before midnight, the fireworks display in St. Mark's Basin, the highlight of the celebration. The best way to watch is from a boat, but a spectacle is guaranteed even from the shore.
This year, forty minutes of lights and colors will illuminate the waters of the lagoon and the silhouettes of the monuments overlooking the basin. A truly thrilling spectacle, a moment eagerly awaited by Venetians and the countless tourists who flock to the lagoon city for the Festa del Redentore. It always has.
The Redeemer in art
Traditionally known as the “most famous night”, the Feast of the Redeemer has attracted Italian and foreign artists to the lagoon over the centuries, inspiring them to create highly evocative paintings: from Joseph Heintz the Younger (1648-1650) to Gabriel Bella in the eighteenth century, to the nineteenth-century landscape painter Carlo Grubacs, to the Venetian Beppe Ciardi (1910-1915), to the American painter Maurice Brazil Prendergast (1899) up to the French artist Abel-Truchet (1857–1918) and the Portuguese Maria Helena Vieira da Silva with her Venetian Feast (1949). Some were struck by the procession on the pontoon bridge, some by the cheering crowd and the lights of the fireworks, some by the boats decorated for the evening.
And if we want to remember a very special Redentore night, how could we not mention the one in 1989, with the Pink Floyd concert on a floating platform in front of St. Mark's Square? A Redentore with many contrasts, which for two days challenged the fragility of the lagoon city with the overwhelming number of young people who invaded the streets, the banks, and St. Mark's Square: among the first signs of an overtourism that is now being questioned, not only in Venice but in all of Italy's beautiful, yet fragile, cities of art.
(Photo credits: Venice City Council press office)
