Normal-sized string quartet perform atop very big floating violin boat in Venice

Venice is an iconic landmark—a city built atop a body of water whose long history and stunning views have inspired great works of art over the centuries. It is also, as of last weekend, the only place we can think of where it’s within the realm of possibility that you might see a string quartet playing Vivaldi while floating around on a big violin boat.

Last Saturday morning, Venice’s Grand Canal was visited by the kind of violin that might be expected to emerge from the laboratory of the world’s least threatening mad scientist. The New York Times reports that the boat is called “Noah’s Violin” and was created by Livio De Marchi, “who conceived the idea during last year’s lockdown” and named it after the biblical ark in order to “bring a message of hope after a storm.”

The quartet performed from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” paying homage to the Venetian composer, as well as pieces by Bach and Schubert as the Violinzilla traveled from Venice’s city hall to the church of La Salute—which was originally built “as a votive offering to the Virgin Mary for deliverance from a plague that decimated the city in 1630.”