Venice emerged from World War II remarkably intact. While the historic city itself was spared from bombing, the nearby industrial zones of Mestre and Marghera were repeatedly targeted by Allied air raids, as were key railway lines running to Padua, Trieste, and Trento. During the war, Venice had also become a center of anti-Mussolini partisan activity, with resistance fighters operating throughout the city and its surroundings.
On 29 April 1945, British and New Zealand troops of the British Eighth Army, under the command of Lieutenant General Freyberg, liberated Venice. The city transitioned quickly into peacetime, with leftist governments taking control in the immediate postwar years. By the early 1950s, centrist and centre-left administrations had taken over, steering Venice through one of its most transformative decades.
The 1950s were a period of rapid growth for Venice. Reconstruction reshaped the city’s relationship with its surroundings, and the population in the broader metropolitan area expanded steadily. Yet the ancient core of Venice — its canals, bridges, and stone palaces — remained a world apart from the modern changes happening on the mainland.
The Grand Canal remained the city’s main artery throughout the decade. Gondoliers navigated its waters alongside vaporetti — the public water buses that had become a fixture of everyday Venetian life. Tourists from across Europe and North America were beginning to arrive in growing numbers, drawn by the city’s unique beauty and its art-filled churches and museums.
Away from the tourist trails, Venice’s quieter canals and backstreet bridges offered a more intimate view of the city. Narrow waterways like the Rio di S. Lorenzo and Rio de la Pleta wound through residential neighborhoods where daily life carried on much as it had for generations. Laundry hung between windows, boats delivered groceries, and children played on stone footpaths beside still water.
St Mark’s Square — Piazza San Marco — served as the social and cultural heart of the city. Flanked by the Procuratie buildings and anchored by the magnificent Basilica, the square drew crowds of locals and visitors alike. Café tables spilled onto the piazza, and pigeons gathered in vast flocks across its broad stone surface, a scene that defined the look of Venice for generations of photographers.
The Rialto Bridge, one of Venice’s oldest and most recognizable landmarks, spanned the Grand Canal at its narrowest point. In 1956, a banner for the XXVIII Venice Biennale hung from its stone arch — a sign of the city’s ongoing role as a major destination for international art and culture. The Biennale, held every two years, brought artists, critics, and collectors from around the world to Venice’s pavilions and galleries.
Saint Mark’s Basilica dominated the eastern end of the piazza with its gilded mosaics and Byzantine domes. The Torre dell’Orologio — the clock tower — stood at the square’s northern edge, its face showing the time, the phases of the moon, and the position of the sun through the zodiac. Both structures had stood for centuries and continued to define the skyline of central Venice throughout the 1950s.
As the sun set over the lagoon, Venice took on a different quality entirely. The water turned amber and gold, and the domes and bell towers of the city were silhouetted against the evening sky. From Ponte della Paglia, next to the Doge’s Palace, visitors looked westward toward the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute — its white stone glowing in the fading light across the mouth of the Grand Canal.
The smaller canals and bridges scattered across Venice’s six sestieri — its six districts — each had their own character. The Rio di San Zulian, viewed from Ponte de la Guerra, and the waterways near Fondamenta Salute showed a quieter, less photographed side of the city. These were the places where Venetians lived and worked, far from the crowds gathering around the Basilica and the Rialto.
Back when feeding the pigeons was fine – not fined.
Although the city had long been a stop on the tourist circuit, in the 1950s the overwhelming majority of Venice’s inhabitants were still Venetian. Wish I could have visited then!