Word: isola
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Despite a grand Venetian setting, this year's summit agenda calls for more work and less public ceremony for the participants. President Reagan will travel every morning by covered motor launch across the Venetian lagoon from the plush Hotel Cipriani, where he will stay, to the tiny Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, situated directly across from the famous Piazza San Marco. The formal summit talks will take place in the bay-windowed, dark-paneled library of a 17th century Benedictine monastery on the miniature island. Security will be so tight that the traditional photograph of the summit leaders will...
Many other Italian towns have also reaped a bonanza from the piety of pilgrims. Isola del Gran Sasso is an island of noisy prosperity in the depressed area of the Abruzzi Mountains because of the shrine of San Gabriele dell' Ad-dolorato, who is revered for his patience and submission to the will of superiors. On the saint's feast day, Feb, 21, the piazza in front of the shrine rings with the din of jukeboxes and shooting galleries and the cries of vendors selling rosaries and cold beer. Some 300,000 pilgrims yearly visit the shrine...
Roman Traffic Commissioner Antonio Pala's plan was simple enough: prohibit all private cars from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. and from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. from the 35-block, 25-acre heart of the city's shopping center (see map). Shoppers would thus have an "isola pedonale"-a pedestrian island-all to themselves during peak hours save for buses and taxis. All seemed bellissimo when the plan went into effect: children calmly played soccer at the foot of the Spanish steps, where autos once hurtled blithely by; grown-ups ambled wonderingly down the center...
...sales manager: "A woman who wants a Gucci bag is not going to settle for something at her neighborhood store."). But by then, the uproar from the small shopkeepers was too loud to go unnoticed at city hall. Caving in, Traffic Commissioner Pala first reopened almost half the isola to private cars, put part of the Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Square) to use as a car park. Two days later he went further, agreeing to let the rest of the island sink under the sea of protest, and putting pedestrians back in their place-hugging the sidewalks for dear life...
...much of Venice could be underwater three generations hence. Somewhat frantic at this statistic, Mayor Giovanni Favaretto Fisco sent out a plea for emergency advice to architects, city planners and art lovers the world over. This month some 200 of them gathered soberly in a tapestried hall on the Isola di San Giorgio to discuss ways to save the fabled city...