Cars stop at Piazzale Roma. Past that point there is no road, no kerb, no parking, and no traffic in any sense a driver would recognise. What there is instead is a status hierarchy of powered vehicles that behaves exactly like car culture, with varnish standing in for paint and an outboard badge standing in for a bonnet script.

The object at the top of that hierarchy is the motoscafo, the licensed water taxi. It is a limousine in every respect except the medium: a long, low, hand-built hull, decks and coamings in lacquered mahogany, chrome brightwork, cream upholstery, and a cabin sized for six people and their luggage. The yards around the lagoon that build and rebuild these hulls work to a form that has changed very little in seventy years, for the same reason the London taxi kept its shape. The job did not change.