A Gondola, Venice · Travel Poster

Each poster comes with a letter home. Ella writes about the place and its hidden history, and the details that never makes it into the guidebooks.

Every gondola in Venice is black, and that's a rule, not a style choice. By the mid-1500s, wealthy Venetians had turned their private gondolas into floating status symbols, gilded, painted in family colours, dripping with decoration. In 1562, the city government had had enough and passed a law forcing every gondola to be painted plain black, no exceptions, to put a stop to the competitive showing off. Four hundred and sixty years later, the law is long gone, but the tradition never left. Every gondola on the canals today is black because Venice once got tired of its rich people showing off.

This poster is an original illustration in watercolour and ink, painted exclusively for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.