Venice is best experienced by boat, but rides on tourist gondolas are very expensive.

The Traditional Boat Museum of Venice is working on restoring the everyday traghetti, simply gondolas that were typically used by ordinary Venetian commuters.

NPR reports on the effort to save the traghetti using crowdsourced fundraising through Buona Causa, a website similar to Kickstarter.

Students and researchers in maritime and Mediterranean World history will be interested in this story.