A glass aquarium at the Venice Railways Station

The glass aquarium at Venice Station (Figure 1) is composed of three groups of six panels each, separated by support pillars and containing decorated glass tiles that form the skylights of the canopy above the viewing platform overlooking the steps towards the canal. Architect Paolo Perilli completed the new Venice Station by designing a robust, eloquent support for the panels: the tiles are embedded and suspended in a steel framework, beneath which a brass strand is stretched, with its “intersections” intended to appear as knots in a net (Figure 2). Had the mesh orientation been orthogonal, the panel would have seemed covered  with a generic decoration. Instead, with a non-orthogonal orientation, the panel resembles a fishing net, where large fish, exceeding the limits of a single tile-mesh, appear caught in the metaphor crafted by the architect. To achieve this effect, the master glassmaker first created the fish and then cut it to fit the parts into the meshes (Figure 3).

The marine animals swim among algae rising from the front of the Canal, held back by the brass nets of the rectangular panels that cast colored light on the entrance to the Station – for those departing – and on the staircase – for those arriving. Each panel is approximately 8 square meters and contains 104 tiles resting on a metal mesh, with 28 triangular tiles on the perimeter. The 1,872 tiles cover over 140 square meters, making it one of the most significant Murano works today. The shelter has a symmetrical structure: projecting and blind on the outside, illuminated by skylights on the inside, and supported by symmetrical tie rods attached to the pillars that punctuate the three series of panels. It covers the expanse above the steps leading to the square, which has 12 steps compared to the 16 of the Madonna della Salute church. These far-reaching choices will allow the Station to handle the enormous functional development in the following decades: the increase in passenger trains, the surge in interchange with water vehicles, and the rise in pedestrian flow between the Station and Piazzale Roma induced by the new bridge.

Among the Venetian friends interviewed, very few know about the aquarium, and even those few are unable to trace its creator and maker. Yet, as the numbers show, we are almost submerged by an imposing work. Research in libraries, magazines, and archives has not yet yielded definitive answers to who built the aquarium and in which furnace. To frame the scant historical records found so far, we will look at other stations that precede the New Santa Lucia Station. After sectoral interventions, an Ideas Competition was announced in 1934. Forty candidates with 48 projects participated, and Virgilio Vallot won, but the project was suspended until 1936 when Minister Benni entrusted the construction of the front body of the passenger building to the Mazzoni-Vallot collaboration. In 1942, Vittorio Cini, then Minister of Communications, appreciating his contribution to the creation of the E42 in Rome (EUR), directly commissioned Mazzoni to redefine the Venice station project. The war delayed the realization. Immediately after the war, the Railways released Mazzoni and commissioned architect Paolo Perilli, who completed the passenger building, façade, and restaurant between 1948 and 1955. The long delay reiterated the design uncertainties and implementation difficulties typical of public works. Probably for the same reason, the media did not cover it extensively: Santa Lucia station became an outdated topic. Minor news events stimulated press articles and Luce films that repeatedly revisited each episode in the following days or weeks. This did not happen for the Station, which received only elusive “coverage.”

During the three years of the works’ completion, few records remain. To date, no documents have been found relating to the aquarium’s author, project, construction, or execution date. Some experts believe that the aquarium was designed by Riccardo Licata, a young collaborator of the Cenedese glass factory where Napoleone Martinuzzi also worked. Martinuzzi designed the two columns originally placed in the Station restaurant and covered with “pulegoso” glass, an invention of Martinuzzi like “scavo” glass, intended to create a new material suited for his sculptural interpretation of glass. Today, only one of the two columns is partially visible, as it is covered by crisp displays in the station bar; the other is stripped of its covering amidst the passenger flow (Figure 4). The attribution to Licata is based on historical, stylistic, and technical considerations. The execution of the fish and marine animals seems attributable to Licata’s “submerged” fish, sharing the realistic style with the aquarium animals (Figure 5). In 2016, the Superintendence placed a restriction on the Station after reports from Franco Miracco, who, in the article “The lost ‘Marcopoliana’ expansion” in La Nuova Venezia of April 30, 2013, complained of commercial exploitation that ignored the architectural merits and quality of the Station’s decoration. The delay is possible justified by the adverse economic situation: a distracted press, a negative critical evaluation of the project and the opposition of Grandi Stazioni, the Company in charge of functional renewal and commercial exploitation of the larger Stations.

The lack of protection, during the implementation of the modernization works, allowed tampering with important decorative elements inside the Venice station. The aquarium is currently in precarious conditions. The current (2024) renovation works of the entire staircase are taking place a few tens of centimetres from the skylights, with some risks. The lighting is entrusted to obsolete fluorescent tubes, which provide banded light of alternating intensity, unstable and cold in colour. The condition of the glass tiles appears critical. Out of the total of 1872, around 300 are decorated with animals, over 700 with long green algae, the others represent the transparency of the water, sometimes with lumps of colour which perhaps allude to floating algae or are small animals difficult to identify. In addition to the three main types: animals, green algae, water, there are also around thirty “neutral” tiles, i.e. of a more homogeneous color and less transparent glass: perhaps these are pieces introduced to replace lost originals. The numbers are imprecise, because sometimes the shapes desired by the designer were not a fully successful result of the master, and leave room for the subjective interpretations of the observer. The neutral tiles are concentrated in panels 1, 2 and 3, starting the numbering from the north side. This leads us to believe that the original order in the first three panels has been tampered with and several panels have been replaced with neutral ones during maintenance interventions. In these panels the drawing appears confused (figure 6): the algae should rise from the bottom, imagined on the side of the Grand Canal, towards the surface of the water, imagined on the side of the tracks. Here, however, the algae are oriented in a non-unique way, with various fish in less natural positions compared to the other panels, and thickening of colours and neutral tiles that highlight tears in the regularity of the net. Regularity that is found in the panels located further south, such as n. 14 reproduced in Figure 7.

Finally, panel no. 6 has a significantly lower number of animals than the others: 8 against the average of 15, with a deviation much higher than the coefficient of variation of the distribution. It also has a high concentration of glass with a red-orange color (figure 8). It is probable, therefore, that this panel also has anomalies due to maintenance or perhaps even dating back to the installation phase.

But what are the three hundred animals that circle between the mesh of the skylight nets? We counted about ten jellyfish (probably including aequorea, cassiopea, carybdea), dozens of different fish (among which it seems possible to recognize bream, triggerfish, scorpion fish, equatorial fish), certainly a hippocampus, an octopus, a lobster, a cuttlefish, eels, sea cucumbers. The glass creation was not aimed at realism, so the short list is tentative, but it helps to recognize that the reproductions probably drew on catalogues of lagoon and sea animals. Having reached the arrival station, our short journey did not bring definitive answers, but we can state that due to historical contingencies and critical-ideological reasons, the New Venice Santa Lucia Station was the subject of an unjustified negative evaluation. Its qualities remained ignored by the media and critics, because the construction site had continued for decades and was therefore no longer newsworthy. The station was later entrusted to Grandi Stazioni Company without a restriction from the Superintendence, which occurred only after significant tampering with the furnishings and decorations. These reasons have made the glass aquarium slip into oblivion. From this oblivion, new works of protection, restoration of the furnishings and restoration of the decoration of the S. Lucia Station, accompanied by research on the arrangement of the panels and tiles, on the project and its execution, will restore the light to the splendid skylight and the visibility it deserves.

Featured image: Venezia Santa Lucia Railways Station

The Alma Dal Co Foundation

A year and a half before COVID, we noticed that hundreds of fish were swimming above our heads in Venice Station. To Alma, the kaleidoscope of transparent marine creatures awakened a love for the sea, the joy of swimming, and a passion for fishing. The loss of Alma on November 14, 2022, prompted her parents, Margherita Turvani and Mario Dal Co, to establish the Alma Dal Co Foundation ETS, which has promoted this study to bring to light the aquarium that has been submerged in oblivion.

You can support the Alma Dal Co Foundation with a donation to the following bank account:

Alma Dal Co Foundation ETS, reason: “charitable donation.”
Allianz Bank IBAN: IT07 V035 8901 6000 1057 0894 416 BIC/SWIFT: BKRAITMMXXX