Voices of Venice

With the bells of the campanile clanging in the background, people are congregating in St. Mark's Square in Venice. Some Venetians reminisce about their history with the piazza and the city as a whole: watching the little iron man strike the bell of the clock in the campanile, which was built in 1912, after the original crashed to the ground in 1902 from an earthquake; having a funeral procession through an adjacent canal for a grandmother on the day of the original campanile falling; seeing trees for the first time, which are scarce in the built-up area of the city; crossing some of the four hundred bridges in the city, the largest being the Rialto; working hard as a gondolier, a job made more lighthearted with a serenade; and living without automobile traffic. And today, some are making their own memories, one being a small child whose pants just won't stay up.