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Festa della Sensa A Glance at The Millennium 1000 - 2000
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Comitato |
Venice
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Festa della Sensa A Glance at The Millennium 1000 - 2000
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Comitato |
From Venice to Trieste, from Trieste to Rijeka, and this year from Rijeka to Bari: step by step, the nuptial ring proceeds along its course down both sides of the Adriatic, as it was its intended purpose to do, and as it travels, it carries a message of friendship or, better still, of brotherhood.
Today, thanks to Internet, we have finally succeeded in overcoming any spatial limits, offering everyone the opportunity to experience the emotion of the Wedding of Venice with the Sea on Ascension Day, what the Venetians call the Festa della Sensa.
The maritime, cultural and economic relations between Venice and Bari are rooted in the dawn of the year 1000; two cities that faced onto the same sea at the northern and southern ends of the Italian peninsula and enlivened their seafaring trade with the Dalmatian populations facing onto the Adriatic from the east.
To celebrate Venetian traditions, one of the schemes promoted by the committee called the Comitato Festa della Sensa has been, since 1993, to reinstate the new coining every year of the famous Venetian Osella by the Polygraphic Institute and State Mint, a tradition that had died in 1797 with the fall of the Venetian Republic.
And for the year 2000, the new Bucintoro!
By now, there is plenty of talk about plans for the third millennium. The year 2000 is just around the corner and so are events of historical importance for Venice, such as the reconstruction of the opera house La Fenice and the anniversary of the victory that gave rise, a thousand years ago, to the Festa della Sensa. To celebrate this anniversary, the Comitato Festa della Sensa has an ambitious project underway for the reconstruction of the Bucintoro, the famous boat destroyed by Napoleon in 1798. The plan is for a reconstruction that is faithful in every detail, bearing witness for future generations of the level of art, culture and civilization achieved by Venice at this turn of the millennium that is just a little way off, a project with a world-wide echo for those who decide to take part in restoring to Venice a vessel worthy of its history.
