Santa Fosca is an accommodation for university students that is located in the historical centre of Venice, and since 1981 it has been hosting many students, who chose to spend their university years in this peculiar housing.

Life at Santa Fosca is something you cannot forget when you leave the place you are a different person. Santa Fosca has its own lifestyle; its aim is to combine the typical student life with community experiences. Living there really enriches you.

A place for students

There are two words that describe life in Santa Fosca: responsibility and community. It is a place where students can combine their university life with the experience of living together. When I arrived at Santa Fosca, I knew nobody and, there, I found 104 people who knew each other as they were family. They could manage a giant home, where many lives intertwined. And this is the most difficult and interesting part of the whole story, whether you want to or not, you have to deal with many other people, share your spaces, learn to live together, be less selfish. Together with rooms and kitchens, Santa Fosca is provided with a living room, a cloister, some study rooms, a library, a laundry room, and at the heart of the housing, the Chapel of Emmaus and the chapel of Lucchesi. Once a week, students have to do their chores and every student is responsible for cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom of their dormitory. Every Tuesday evening, in the Chapel of Lucchesi, all the students gather together to attend an assembly. This meeting is a very important moment because it is actually the only occasion on which all the students see each other and, usually, they are divided into groups to do activities, such as talking about important topics face to face. The Chapel of Lucchesi and that of Emmaus are the heart of the facility, where students can go whenever they want and they can find a very welcoming environment, where they can take time for their thoughts and reflections.

In Santa Fosca, every student has their own duty; for example, I am part of the “Green Group” (made of 5 people), which is responsible for the ecology of our housing. We take out the trash of every kitchen (there are four of them, as we are many students), and think about “green proposals”, which will help do something to improve our habits concerning the environment. But, of course, there are many other tasks: we are responsible for other different areas of the house. Every dormitory, kitchen, and other space has its own coordinator so that the house can be a tidy and comfortable environment for everybody.

In the summer, as universities close from the beginning of July until September and students do not stay in Santa Fosca, the accommodation becomes a hostel. It welcomes tourists, and every student donates one week of their summer to take care of the house: they do maintenance work and deal with the tourists.

Santa Fosca is said to be the new model for university accommodation; it is an opportunity students have to live an extraordinary time during university, in a wonderful framework that only Venice can offer.