I first became aware of this when Chris pointed out a photo and headline in a local Venetian newspaper on Saturday. 

The photo was of some huge boat, the key word there being huge. Apparently, there are had been protests when a larger-than-normal cruise ship came floating down the lagoon on the day before.

Now, there are normally large cruise ships that float down the Grand Canal, so we didn’t really think much about it.

But later that day, when we were cruising around the canals ourselves — on a normal-sized vaparetto (the “bus” boat in Venice) — we suddenly found ourselves passing by where that huge cruise ship was docked. I snapped  3 photos that I’ve merged into one here in order to show the entire ship in one panorama photo (all the photos are at the end of the post).

Called the MSC Divinia, it’s only listed as #5 on the list of largest cruise ships that I found on Wikipedia, but perhaps #1-#4 don’t sail down the canal in Venice. It’s twice as tall and 100+ feet longer than the Titanic was, with double the number of decks (18 vs 9). You can find all the specs for the MSC Divinia here; in this other link you can find the comparable specs for the Titanic for comparison.

I personally always think of the Titanic as being a huge cruise ship. If the Titanic was considered huge, the Divinia is beyond enormous.  Later in the day, we actually saw it leaving Venice; as it passed by the San Giorgio Maggiore church, it was clear that the cruise ship was taller than the church façade. Bizarre. I quickly whipped out my camera to capture a couple of shots; San Giorgio is on the left in the photos of it passing the church.

As the ship finally passed where we were standing in the boat bus stop, I couldn’t capture the whole boat framed in the bus stop doorway. The Divinia was just too wide for a single photo when we were that close.

Overall, it looks a bit out-of-place in that tiny lagoon, don’t you think? It’s really a bit too big to be regularly trawling up and down that lagoon – I don’t know if the depth of the channel in the canal is uniform all the way across, but I’m guessing there’s a reason they have to use two tug boats to guide it out.

Chris read online today that there’s a group that’s pushing for Sophia Loren to distance herself from being associated with a cruise ship that’s so unsuitable for Venice.  The ship’s current name is apparently somehow connected to Sophia Loren, although I’m not quite sure why. But according to the Wikipedia article, the ship was originally  called the MSC Fantastica, and was later renamed Divinia to honor the movie star.

I’m guessing that there are a bunch of  folks in Venice right now, though, that think that the ship is neither “fantastic” nor “divine”.