The Historical Regatta is an important sporting event related to a historical re-enactment, which takes place in Venice along the Grand Canal on the first Sunday of September.

History

In the early days of the Serenissima, in the Venice lagoon it was quite common to have fun and spend leisure time practicing rowing, with different types of boats. From this amateur practice real speed and duration challenges soon arose, with increasingly precise methods and rules.

It is not clear when the regatta tradition began. According to some scholars  the origin could date back to 942 when an episode similar to that of the Sabine rat took place: during a popular festival, the pirates kidnapped Venetian women of marriageable age but were immediately chased by the men who rowed furiously on the their boats managed to reach and free the kidnapped girls. From this episode the Festa delle Marie originated with adjoining regatta.

The first certain dating in which the term "regata" appears dates back to 1274, to a note of an anonymous code that reads "Splendor magnificiissime Urbis Venetorum, 1274, die 16 septembris, indicta regatta cum navigiis habentibus remos viginti" . It is therefore certain that regattas between large boats took place as early as the 13th century. The public authorities of the time began to encourage this type of sporting activity, seeing as well as a beneficial and useful physical exercise in their free time, also a practice aimed at reinvigorating and preparing the crews of battle navies to support efforts in the event of conflicts at sea.

In 1315 the Senate issued a decree regulating the annual performance of the Festa delle Marie regatta, even if the most impressive and grandiose events were held in later times, when they were celebrated together with major public events, important anniversaries and celebrations in honor of illustrious guests. The unique spectacle of the most sumptuous regattas soon became a source of pride for Venice, with the constant growth of prestige and the commercial and military power of the Republic in the Mediterranean.

The first pictorial representation of a regatta in the city of Venice dates back to the 1500s, when a detail of Jacopo de 'Barbari's View of Venice depicts a competition between four-row boats in the section between the Lido and Piazza San Marco.

Typically, the regattas took place in the open lagoon, as in the case also reported in the map of De 'Barbari, and only exceptionally took place along the Grand Canal. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the regattas, although enjoying public patronage, were called by the Compagnia della Calza, until 1631 when the Council of Ten, perhaps following the plague epidemic in progress at that time, decided to grant the exclusivity of the State to call regattas, granting a delegation license, on the designation of the relevant magistrates, for private individuals who should have also taken care of covering the organizational expenses. From 1687 the delegation was granted to patrician families and guilds of arts and crafts.

In 1670 it became fashionable to publicly distribute flyers showing both the role of the regattas and the results of those already carried out. The champions of the regattas of the time, as still today, were above all the professional Barcaroli and the gondoliers, accustomed daily to the practice of rowing and therefore well trained and precise with the oar, as well as generally very vigorous and physically performing.

Even after the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, under the French domination, the practice of regattas continued, albeit at a more reduced pace. In the same 1797 the French organized two regattas, one on July 14 and one on September 18 on the occasion of the visit to Venice of Giuseppina Beauharnais, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, then still general. Also in 1807 a regatta was organized in honor of Napoleon himself visiting the city.

In 1815, with the passage of the city under the Austrians, a regatta was organized in honor of the emperor of Austria and under the new regime the practice of the regattas resumed a new vigor so that in 1841 an annual regatta was regulated along the Grand Canal , organized at public expenses in a manner very close to the current ones: a limit was placed on the number of participating boats (from seven to nine, whereas before there were practically no limits), it was established that the gondolas would be all the same and supplied directly by the municipality, and in 1843 the coloring was introduced to distinguish the crews. The regatta was interrupted in 1848, following the insurrection of the city, and was not resumed until 1866, the year in which Venice was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. The number of participating boats was definitively established in nine starting from 1875, while the color scheme for the boats, still in use, it was fixed in 1892. With the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy the color of the assigned flags also changed: originally red for the first, green for the second, blue for the third and yellow for the fourth, were changed to red for the first, white for the second, green for the third (in honor of the Italian flag) and blue for the fourth (in honor of the House of Savoy).

The appellation Storica was coined and introduced only in 1899, at the suggestion of the then mayor, Filippo Grimani, who inserted the regatta in the context of the events of the third Biennale. In the same year the opening historical procession was also proposed, consisting of parade boats reconstructed on the basis of drawings and period prints [2]. It was only after the Second World War that the historical procession joined the re-enactment of the arrival in Venice of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, forced to abdicate in 1489 in favor of the Republic of Venice in exchange for a life annuity and the lordship of Asolo, in fact allowing the annexation of the island to the territory of the Serenissima.

During the Fascist period, the organization of the regattas gradually became exclusive to the National Opera Dopolavoro and in 1925 the Historical Regatta was named, only for that year, "Fascist Regatta" and was run on gondolas instead of gondolini. In 1928, the obligation for regaters to be registered in national trade unions or other fascist or military organizations was established by regulation. The invasion of Poland by Germany on 1 September 1939 led to the suspension of the Regatta, scheduled for the following day, a suspension that lasted throughout the period of the Second World War except for 1942, when the regatta was artificially organized by the movie house Sol as part of the Grand Canal movie. The Historical Regatta resumed in 1946 (named for that year the Liberation Regatta) and since then it has not been interrupted.

The modern event

The Historical Regatta takes place mainly along the Grand Canal and is one of the most spectacular, picturesque and engaging moments of city life. It is an event much appreciated by many tourists, but felt especially by the Venetians, who reserve it considerable importance among the various annual events that take place in the city.

The event is composed of two distinct phases: the historical procession and, subsequently, the competitive regattas.