It almost doesn’t make sense, in a city suffused with rich color at every corner – purple, yellow, red, orange flowers cascading over balconies and iron railings, marble pillars of pink, blue-gray, white, and the green-black shadows on crystal green canals – that the very icon that epitomizes Venice in the minds of people world-wide would be black.

Have they been black forever? If so, why? And if not, what happened? By all logic, it would seem they should be vividly colorful and that something must have gone terribly awry sometime in the past to have ended them up in such dire straits. Venice was, after all, a city of artists, the dream destination for painters and sculptors throughout the region and beyond; the city reflects this at every turn in lush oil paintings, the mosaics of St. Mark’s, elegant ponticelli (bridges) and even in the marble steps leading up from the canals into homes and onto walkways.