For the spring and summer of 2025 I will try to maintain a schedule with two episodes each month, or every second week.
The reason is not a lack of desire to do more, but sometimes life plays games with you.
As I started work on the podcast in the late autumn — planning episodes, writing scripts, practising with recordings and editing, making the website — I expected to focus on my history walks, writing the newsletter and making the podcast. All in all, different aspects of the same theme.
The Italian state then decided that, after a hiatus of ten years, it was time to reopen the exams to become an authorised tourist guide.
I am not currently a tourist guide, but an accompagnatore turistico.
With the licence as accompagnatore, I can do my history walks in the squares and alleyways of Venice, but I cannot take people inside any kind of museum, church, gallery, archaeological area etc. For that, you need a licence as a guida turistica.
Therefore, if I want to develop my tours and activities any further, I will need the licence as an authorised tourist guide.
Now, for the first time in ten years, the possibility is there. The exam will probably be sometimes during the summer, but we don’t know the dates yet.
While I’m well versed in most Venetian history, the exam and the licence are for all of Italy, and the curriculum covers history, art history, geography and legal matters, so I need to study quite a bit to get up to scratch on a national level.
Consequently, I will need to keep the podcast on the slow burner, until we’re past the tourist guide exam, which we still don’t know the date of.
I believe that with the material I have prepared over the winter, and what I will have to do anyway for History Walks Venice and the Venetian Stories newsletter, I can keep up with a fortnightly schedule for the podcast.
Leave a Reply