The old marble restoration and salvage workshops of Professor Romeo Dall'Era (1879-1958) in the gardens of Palazzo Giovanelli in Santa Fosca in the Cannareggio of Venice, has closed.
 
It was established in 1896, taken over by his son Bruno Dall'Era (1910-2000) who was interviewed in the 1990s for SalvoNEWS - and amazing find we made while we were compiling the Italian Salvo directory. Latterly it was run by his grandsons Giancarlo, Alberto and Giovanni Comelato who we met in return to Venice in 2012. Customers range from restoration of the Doges Palace to bathrooms for Freya Stark's house in Asolo.
 
In a spirit of community togetherness the brothers were inviting school parties to tour the yard, allow performance artists to entertain tourists, and hold local street parties amongst the sculpture and salvaged Imperial Roman Porphyry and large chunks of the even rarer Laconian marble or Spartan Porphyry. At the time it seemed property pressure might get the better of them.
 
And so the bankruptcy of their landlords, the famed auction house Semenzato, resulted in the sale of the palazzo and its outlying gardens and marble workshops to a property company to develop into yet another hotel.
 
Domenico Crivellari, a historian and art lover said, "If these artists leave the city will have lost to a precious heritage." Gianni de Checchi, secretary of the artisans of Venice asked the mayor Giorgio Orsoni to try to stop the eviction and save the family of artisans. "We must find a solution," he said.
 
"We cannot move to the mainland," warns Giovanni Comelato. "We are bound to this city, here we also have our customers. Wealthy Venetians and tourists who order copies of famous sculptures and ornaments of the medieval city." Works worth tens of thousands of euro, such as a table inlaid with a true copy of a piece of the floor of the Basilica of San Marco.
 
To no avail, we believe the yard has now closed.