As "Novye Izvestiya" notes, the city government had long wanted to regulate traffic on the canals of Venice. The last straw that forced them to move from words to action was the death last year of a tourist from Germany. He died in a collision between a vaporetto (water bus) and the gondola he was in.
Now all 433 Venetian gondoliers with permits to carry passengers have received license plates. They consist of plaques with white numbers on a black background and are attached to the hull of the boats with black adhesive tape. At night they glow, making movement on the water safer.
The installation of license plates violated a rule that had existed for four and a half centuries. Since 1562, the only requirement for the appearance of gondolas was painting in black and white. This rule, which made the boats gloomy and dreary, was needed to curb the imagination of Venetian nobles. They competed with each other, painting their gondolas in bright colors and giving them bizarre shapes. At the same time, a unified design for the boats was adopted.