Berkley Center

As we pushed through the jostling Sunday morning crowds of Venice, stepping on enormous hoop skirt hems and dodging swooping birds, the entire city seemed to bob up and down in anticipation. Our time on the water buses of the Grand Canal, floating from the main island to Lido and back, had given us a seemingly permanent sense of rocking, which was magnified tenfold in the tense half hour before the event of the year. The city was shifting its weight, carefully adjusting its bridges and islands as tourists and locals alike streamed through heavy fog towards the Piazza San Marco.

We made the journey to the “Floating City” for the start of Carnevale, a 10-day celebration that combines history, technology, religion, and the arts in the interest of good old-fashioned communal debauchery. Historically, Carnevale was the final chance for frivolity and fun before the start of Lent. Elaborate costumes and masks meant that for a short time, people of all social classes could mingle freely.

The masks worn in the season from Christmas to Lent are extremely important in Venetian culture, where artisans hand make everything from feathered child-sized eye masks to face-covering wire contraptions. These masks are both an art form and a technological innovation, mass produced but remarkably unique. The costumes, which pay tribute to the festivals of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, are even more elaborate. The women wear beautiful ball gowns, complete with full hoopskirts and huge wigs, and the velvet gentlemen’s clothes and long-nosed masks complement them perfectly. During Carnevale it’s easy to feel as if you’ve disappeared into a perfectly-decorated period play—the city’s art is worn on every face and lived in countless cultural experiences.

Even in disguise, the crowd that had crushed itself into San Marco by noon for the official start of 2016’s Carnevale was incredibly diverse. Street vendors called out in English, tourists argued in German, and two girls next to me propped up a selfie stick in front of the Basilica, gossiping in Chinese. My group of masked American students blended easily into the mass of people, shuffling together towards a spot in the shadow of the tower.

At 11:55 a.m., the sound of pounding drums began to echo forward from the center of the piazza. A woman, in the biggest gown we had seen yet, stepped forward at the top of the tower. She waved down, greeted by her audience with a singular “Ciao!” Announcers on stages opposite the basilica narrated the action in frantic Italian, pointing towards the wire strung across the piazza and adding to the sense of frenzy pervading the confetti-thick air.

As noon finally struck, a moving statue at the opposite side of the square began to beat a bell, which rang out across the city to announce the inevitability of this completely otherworldly event. The woman at the top of the tower smiled, adjusted the wire on her belt, and stepped forward as the many languages of the crowd melted into a single roar.

She moved jerkily, an orange silhouette against a pure white sky, and we waited with bated breath for the fall to pick up speed. But as we waited for her to drop, (“She will fall,” the shopkeeper of a Bar Americano had told me the night before) a hymnal instrumental piece began to play and the woman on the wire swam gracefully into a choreographed dance. She floated gently across the square, spreading her arms like a dancer and throwing confetti onto the cheering crowd. In the midst of all this glamorous excess, we suddenly felt almost childish for expecting something so violently abrupt, so totally opposed to the gliding beauty of a city built on canals.

When she finally landed safely behind the scaffolding, a plume of gold glitter exploded across the piazza, coating the screaming crowd and allowing each masked reveler, whether rich or poor, Italian or foreigner, to unite as one in an unbelievably unique celebration of Venetian culture and art.