Firefighters (left) transport a gondola after it collided with a ferry boat at the Grand Canal in Venice.
A gondola and a vaporetto waterbus collided yesterday on Venice’s Grand Canal, killing a 50-year-old German tourist and badly injuring his young daughter, local media reported.
The accident happened around mid-day near the canal city’s famous Rialto Bridge as the public transport waterbus manoeuvred toward a stop, Italy’s Ansa news agency said.
The German man, identified as a criminal law professor from Munich, his wife and three children and the gondolier all fell into the water in the accident.
Other gondoliers rushed to the rescue, taking them to the bank.
The waterbus reportedly crushed the German man, named as Joachim Reinhard Vogel, against the gondola.
His three-year-old daughter suffered a head injury and was taken to hospital in nearby Padua. Initial reports had said the injured girl was on the vaporetto.
The captain of the ferry, which was heading towards Saint Mark’s Square, was said to have lost control while trying to avoid other vessels in the congested Grand Canal.
“We have spoken out several times against this situation. There is too much traffic and it is going too fast, but nobody listens to us,” Aldo Reato, leader of the gondoliers’ trade union, told Ansa news agency.
They said it was the first time in living memory that people were injured in an accident involving a gondola.
“I am really sad after what has happened,” said Venice mayor Giorgio Orsoni.
As a sign of mourning the 425 gondolas normally in service suspended activity yesterday.
Prosecutors have opened an inquiry into the causes of the accident, the news agency reported.
They interrogated the gondolier and the ferry captain in the accident, impounded their vessels, and ordered the retrieval of footage from nearby closed circuit TV cameras.