The news that Venice is finally to have a female gondolier got a mixed reception when it was announced that 23 year old Giorgia Boscolo had been admitted to the special training course to become one of the citys famous boatmen (oops! boatwomen!). Her male colleagues were not enthusiastic at the idea of welcoming to their midst the first female gondolier in nine hundred years. Giorgia, however, was undeterred as she stuck on her boater and prepared for her first trips across the lagoon.

She was luckier than the last woman applicant, the American Alexandra Hai, who failed in her second attempt to pass the admission exam in 1999. Alexandra claimed she had been discriminated  against because of her sex, after she had spent three years on the Santa Maria del Giglio gondola shuttle as a substitute gondolier.