The gondola is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian lagoon. It is typically propelled by a gondolier, who uses a rowing oar, which is not fastened to the hull, in a sculling manner, and also acts as the rudder. The uniqueness of the gondola includes its being asymmetrical along the length, making the single-oar propulsion more efficient.
A gondola ride
La Riva by John Singer Sargent
A gondola on the Grand Canal
Gondolas on the Grand Canal
Venetian, wider Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy, mostly in Veneto, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto: in Trentino, Friuli, the Julian March, Istria, and some towns of Slovenia, Dalmatia (Croatia) and Bay of Kotor (Montenegro) by a surviving autochthonous Venetian population, and in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, the United States and the United Kingdom by Venetians in the diaspora.
A sign in Venetian reading "Here Venetian is also spoken"
A street sign (nizioléto) in Venice using Venetian calle, as opposed to the Italian via
Lasa pur dir (Let them speak), an inscription on the Venetian House in Piran, southwestern Slovenia
Venetian sign in ticket office, Santa Lucia di Piave