While tourists ventured without a second thought onto the walkway’s glass floor, the Venetians treaded cautiously. The Venetians insisted on traversing the narrow central strip of stone; some even took off their fogged glasses to keep their eyes on the floor. When a tourist stumbled, they barely looked up.
“That’s not a bridge over there,” said retired longshoreman Angelo Xalle, 71, who said he helped people with broken chins or foreheads get up off the slippery floor. “It’s a trap.”
Designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava, the Ponte della Costituzione is a multi-million dollar glass and steel work that opened in 2008. The idea was that its smooth curve over the Grand Canal near Venice train station would symbolize the city’s advance towards modernity. But the pedestrian bridge ended up becoming more famous for causing dangerous falls and slips.
Now, after years of problems and protests, the city of Venice has decided to replace translucent glass with a less slippery – and less glamorous – material, trachyte, a type of stone.
“People get hurt and then they sue the city hall,” explained Franca Zaccariotto, from Venice’s public works department. “We have to intervene.”
The city’s decision to set aside 500,000 euros (about R$ 3 million) to replace the glass section of the walkway was taken after several unsuccessful attempts to use resin strips or other non-slip materials to limit accidents. Last month, when the onset of cold and winter rains made the walkway floor especially dangerous, the city placed warning signs on the glass portion of the walkway -which makes up most of it – urging people to avoid walking around. .
Acclaimed around the world for works including the World Trade Center Transport Center in New York and the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, Calatrava was commissioned to design the catwalk in 1999. It opened nine years more later, after protests about the delays and runaway costs of the work, and soon after, complaints began to arrive about slips and falls.
Complaints intensified in 2013, when the city installed a cable car on the bridge to make it more accessible. The round red cabin, which was not designed by Calatrava, cost about 1.5 million euros, was slow and was unbearably hot in summer. It ended up being dismantled.
In 2018, the city replaced some of the glass plates with trachyte. But during the pandemic, when national television filmed people crossing the bridge to illustrate the return to normalcy after the lockdown, the cameras caught a passerby falling over. Last year, the city managed to get the necessary funds to replace the entire glass floor.
Poetry and security
Venice is not the first city to have problems with works by Calatrava. In 2011 the city of Bilbao, Spain, installed a large black rubber carpet over a Calatrava walkway covered with glass tiles, because many pedestrians had already skidded and fallen.
The Venice plan has yet to undergo structural tests and receive approval from the city’s architectural authority, but, according to Zaccariotto, the city is determined to take it forward, to avoid “almost daily” falls.
While appreciating Calatrava’s work, she said that aesthetic criteria should not take precedence over safety principles. And, as the lawsuits in court are aimed at the city hall, and not the architect, it is the city hall who will be in charge of finding a solution to the problem.
“We cannot always be guided by poetry,” said Zaccariotto. “We need to give security to the population.”
Santiago Calatrava has already faced fines and lawsuits over problems linked to the bridge, but he is defending himself against his detractors. He said in 2008: “The bridge was checked with sophisticated methods that determined that it has a solid structure and is performing better than anticipated.”
Calatrava’s office did not respond to a request for statements about the new security plan or criticism of the runway.
The author of one of the lawsuits is the retired Roman teacher Mariarosaria Colucci. She was on her way to the theater in 2011 to see her son perform when she fell on the Calatrava bridge and broke her humerus – “into five pieces, like an artichoke”. She sued the city hall and won the lawsuit in the first instance, to receive compensation of around 80 thousand euros. But the city has appealed the decision, Colucci lost and is now awaiting the final decision of the Italian Supreme Court.
“This bridge looks beautiful in an architecture magazine,” commented Colucci, 76. “But you have to be very agile not to fall.”
Anna Maria Stevanato traveled to central Venice by bus last year to participate in a hole-in-the-wall tournament and fractured her collarbone when she fell over the catwalk.
“I fell like a sack of potatoes,” he said, commenting that Calatrava “has spoiled the most beautiful years of my old age.”
For her, who is 80 years old, the problem is that the Spanish architect does not master the art of building secure bridges, as is the case with the Venetians. Venice has around 400 bridges. Stevanato and many other city dwellers pride themselves on being able to walk across them while reading a book or even with their eyes closed. But, according to many, in the case of the walkway created by Calatrava, the mixed dimensions of the steps and the color of the tiles leave them confused and with their feet adrift.
“A Venetian would never have built such an absurdity,” said Stevanato.
Some people approve of the proposed changes to the runway. “The bridge is going to get uglier, but it has to be that way,” commented Leonardo Pilat, 19, whose mother took a tumble on the catwalk.
Not everyone agrees, however.
“It’s an exceptional bridge. It should be left as it is,” said retired university professor Demetrio Corazza, 85, who often crossed the bridge with his wife to shop. “Beauty must save the world.”
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