A deep red racing yacht, its bow marked with a roaring, flame-maned lion, moored today among the brick sheds of the Arsenale’s northern basin — one of the boats built for Italy’s 1992 America’s Cup campaign, the closest the country has come to winning sailing’s oldest trophy.
At a glance
Il Moro di Venezia was the challenge that the industrialist Raul Gardini backed for the 1992 America’s Cup, sailed for the Compagnia della Vela di Venezia, skippered by the American Paul Cayard and designed by the Argentine naval architect Germán Frers. Between 1990 and 1992 the campaign built five hulls under the same name, developed and tested between Italy, Spain and the United States; the last of them, Moro V (ITA-25), went on to San Diego for the Cup itself. The boat pictured here, moored at the Arsenale Nord in Venice, is one of the campaign’s yachts — its exact hull number is not confirmed from this photograph alone.
Key facts
- Campaign: Il Moro Challenge, for the 1992 America’s Cup (28th edition)
- Backer: Raul Gardini, chairman of Montedison
- Yacht club: Compagnia della Vela di Venezia, founded for the challenge in 1992
- Skipper: Paul Cayard
- Designer: Germán Frers
- Hulls built: five, all named Il Moro, launched between Italy, Spain and the USA, 1990–92
- Result: won the 1992 Louis Vuitton Cup (the challengers’ selection series), the first Italian boat to reach the America’s Cup Match itself; lost the Cup 4–1 to the American defender America³
- Where photographed: the Arsenale Nord, Venice, beside the restored Tesa 105 and the sheds now occupied by the CNR’s Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR) and by Thetis SpA
A red boat and a national obsession
For a country with a long maritime history but no tradition of America’s Cup racing, Il Moro di Venezia became, briefly, a genuine national story. Raul Gardini financed the campaign through Montedison and gave it a Venetian identity from the start, founding the Compagnia della Vela di Venezia as its home club and naming every hull Il Moro — a reference, by way of the club’s emblem, to the winged lion of St Mark reimagined as a roaring, flame-maned figurehead on the boats’ bows. Between 1990 and 1992 five hulls of that name were built and tested in Italy, Spain and the United States, an unusually large and expensive development programme even by America’s Cup standards.
The campaign peaked in the challengers’ series in San Diego in the spring of 1992: sailing the fifth hull, Moro V (ITA-25), skippered by Paul Cayard, the Italian team beat New Zealand 5–3 to win the Louis Vuitton Cup and become the first Italian boat ever to sail in the America’s Cup Match itself. There the run ended: the American defender America³, backed by Bill Koch with much greater resources, won the Cup 4–1. It remains the closest an Italian campaign has come to lifting the trophy.
What you see
The hull is painted a deep red, with a stylised lion’s head in white and red on the bow — mane rendered as flame-like rays, mouth open in a roar — and claw-mark graphics slashed across the stern quarters. Moored at the Arsenale Nord, it sits in front of the long brick sheds of the Novissima dock, restored in recent years and now home to research institutions rather than naval stores: a nineteenth-century arsenal building behind a twentieth-century racing yacht, both still doing something with the water in front of them.
Do you know more?
We have not confirmed which of the five Il Moro hulls this is, or who moors and maintains it today. If you know, write to Sofia, who looks after these pages.
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Getting there
The Arsenale Nord is reached from Fondamenta Nuove or via the Celestia and Bacini vaporetto stops; Tesa 105, the public entrance to this part of the Arsenale, is open on weekday mornings.
Sources
- Wikipedia (Italian and English), “Il Moro di Venezia” and “Il Moro Challenge” — on Raul Gardini, Compagnia della Vela di Venezia, the five hulls, Paul Cayard, Germán Frers, and the 1992 Louis Vuitton Cup and America’s Cup result.
- Fondazione Raul Gardini, on the 1992 Louis Vuitton Cup campaign.
- VeneziaToday and Thetis SpA, on the restoration of Tesa 105 and the current occupants of the Arsenale Nord (ISMAR-CNR, Thetis SpA).
- Luigi De Marchi, who photographed the yacht.
Gallery
Photograph by Luigi De Marchi.
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See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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