Venice Isn't Sinking, It's Flooding – And It Needs to Learn How to Swim

“Will you look at that? St. Mark’s Square is flooded!” An Australian day tripper is astonished.
“This place is actually sinking,” her friend casually exclaims. They, like so many I’ve overheard
on the vaporetti, are convinced that the Venetian islands exist on a precipice between the
fragility of their current condition and nothing short of imminent submersion. With catastrophe
always around the corner a short break in Veniceis more of an extreme adventure trip than a
European city-break. If it were true, that is.
Venice is not sinking – it's flooding. Since time immemorial the city has periodically flooded as
a result of tidal patterns and residents are well-accustomed to its wintertime rhythm (and, less
frequently, during the summer season). While acqua alta (high water) is a fascination for
intermittent visitors it is an accepted inconvenience for those who live with it: ground floor doors
have to be sealed with barriers, boots and dungarees have to be fished out of the cupboard and, if
the water is particularly high, boats might be unable to pass beneath the smaller of the city’s
hundreds of bridges until the water eventually subsides. Walkways are erected throughout the
city’s lowest areas (Piazza San Marco is, incidentally, particularly low terrain) and people
continue to see to their daily business – only in a more elevated fashion. I once joined friends for
dinner during a freak summer sirocco wind-induced acqua alta on the Fondamenta Ormesini –
we sat outside, legs submerged, thinking little of the otherwise extreme conditions that the
evening had proffered.
Venice has always had an unusually intimate connection to the water which surrounds it. Its first
settlers were refugees, fleeing to the marshlands where the city now stands in order to escape the
genocidal tendencies of Germanic tribes and the Huns. The first structures they erected on
the rivoalto (a small constellation of high islands where the Rialto and its Palladian bridge is now
positioned) were built atop wooden piles – a unique process of petrifying sunken columns in the
silt of the swamp that is still in use today, both as a method of preservation and when building
anew. Even as the city expanded into La Serenissima—the serene Venetian Republic, one of the
most powerful thalassocracies that the world has ever seen—it was consistently reminded of its
delicate, defensive and highly lucrative relationship with the lagoon and the oceans beyond. The
ancient and mystical annual Marriage of the Sea, established in AD 1000, saw the Doge (the
elected ruler of the Republic) hurl a consecrated ring into the murky waters and declare the city
and sea to be indissolubly one. This liturgy, one can surmise, was a way of throwing caution to
the wind and praying that prosperity would continue amid comparatively ungovernable natural
conditions.

Astonishingly, a version of this nuptial ceremony to the ocean also continues to this day. Over
recent centuries, and especially since the 1970s, Venice’s economy has become almost entirely
reliant on tourism; its unsurpassed naval might has been superseded by clumsy and unsettlingly
large cruise liners and large swatches of San Marco, Cannaregio, and the Dorsoduro are now
hotels, hostels and holiday houses. Many Venetians have either been driven away by lack of
employment or have left of their own accord. Contessa Jane da Mosto, an environmental scientist
who has lived in the city since 1995, is one who has actively made the lagoon her home. She
married a Venetian—Conte Francesco da Mosto, himself an architect and author—and have
together raised four children in the city against the backdrop of a domestic exodus.
When asked about the history of Venice and the water, Da Mosto points to a particular
contemporary event that changed the future of the city: the flood of November 4th, 1966.
Reaching 194cm (6’4), this was wholly unprecedented in the history of acqua alte. Heavy rain, a
severe sirocco wind, crumbling infrastructure and entirely unready population isolated the city
for twenty-four hours without repent. The flood revealed for the first time to what extent the built
fabric of Venice had deteriorated – in the words of British art historian John Pope-Hennessy,
“the havoc wrought by generations of neglect.”
“Venice lives thanks to big disasters such as this,” Da Mosto argues. “They have caused [the
city] to fundamentally change direction.” At the point in time in which the 1966 flood occurred
more and more of the lagoon was being absorbed by the expansion of the Marghera industrial
zone. “The national and international attention that followed this event changed the emphasis to
safeguarding the heritage of the city." As part of what became known as the International
Safeguarding Campaign, investment flowed into Venice from around the world and its decaying
skeleton began to breathe new life.
In November last year, fifty years on from the flood, We Are Here Venice—an organisation
founded by Da Mosto to raise awareness of the problems that the city faces in the 21st Century—
inscribed a simple blue line around shop windows and doorways of Piazza San Marco. L’Acqua
e la Piazza (The Water and the Square) graphically indicates just how high the water rose that
day. “A strong storm surge meant that the water didn’t leave the lagoon when the tide turned
and, combined with a sort of oscillation in the Upper Adriatic (just like when you’re in the bath
and the water rocks back and forth), extra water was pushed into the lagoon.” As the water was
expelled and ‘hit’ the opposite coastline of the Adriatic, it simply returned and washed back into
Venice a few hours later. This back and forth motion, Da Mosto explains, can occur for days on
end until the water eventually dissipates down into the Mediterranean Sea.
Following the disaster, which also caused considerable damage in other Italian cities, repairs and
restorations were carried out to ageing monuments. In the 1980s, MOSE (named in an homage to
Moses, the Biblical figure who was said to have parted the Red Sea) was commissioned: four
vast retractable gates at the inlets of the Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia which, when operational
later this year, will be able to seal the entire lagoon from high tides in fifteen minutes flat. The
project, akin to the Thames Barrier in London or the Maeslant Barrier in Holland, has been mired
in a corruption scandal (€5,493,000,000 has been spent on the project to date) and is by no means
a perfect solution. “Even when the mobile barriers start operating,” Da Mosto iterates, "Piazza
San Marco will still be flooded many times a year. […] It’s absurd to think that mobile barriers
alone can save Venice. They are just one of the many measures that are needed in the lagoon.”

“The last thirty years,” she explains, “have been heavily conditioned by strong lobbies that
permeated every crack and corner of the cultural, scientific and economic life of Venice. They
have all been associated with this huge flow of investment through the 1973 Special Law
for Venice 1973 [which aims to "guarantee the protection of the landscape, historical,
archaeological and artistic heritage of the city of Venice and its lagoon by ensuring its socio-
economic livelihood"] that was directed at building the mobile barriers. But, as the scandal has
revealed, over one billion Euros can not be traced. On top of that, the money spent on the actual
works has been shown to have been spent at inflated prices. So not only did a huge amount of
money disappear, but they simply spent more than they should have.”
For a city which has always heavily relied on an economy driven by foreign trade or investment,
plans on the scale of the MOSE project are nothing new. Venice has always made courageous
decisions to maintain accessibility between the sea and the city. “When the lagoon first started to
silt and navigation became difficult, the city diverted whole rivers further south or further north
of the lagoon so that less sediment came in so they could keep the channels deep for the
galleons,” Da Mosto clarifies. “Subsequently, during Austrian occupation at the end of the 19th
Century, the entire coastline of the barrier islands to Venicewere reinforced and proper inlets
were built to ensure that access to the lagoon was deep and wide.” Unfortunately, as a
consequence of that and many other similar moves, Venice is at risk of no longer being part of a
lagoon system at all; as channels are dredged ever deeper to accommodate the likes of MS Queen
Victoria (a 90,049 gross ton pleasure-cruiser operated by Cunard) in port, it is being transformed
into less of a lagoon and more into a bay of the sea – and that, according to Da Mosto, “has very
important implications for the integrity of the city as well as its biodiversity and ecological
functions [see 'Criterion (v)' at the foot of this article]."
There can be no doubt that Venice lives thanks to the regular exchange between the lagoon and
the sea and, while there is still inherent resilience in the system, much has been neglected over
the preceding decades. “We’re beyond the times when some ministry for infrastructure and
public works can just come and do what they want to do, or what business interests make them
do,” Da Mosto argues. “The whole city needs to wake up.”
Find out more about the activities of We Are Here Venice, here.

Venice's Inscription as a World Heritage Site (1987)

Venice and its lagoon were inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. According to the citation,
they "form an inseparable whole of which the city of Venice is the pulsating historic heart and a
unique artistic achievement. The influence of Venice on the development of architecture and
monumental arts has been considerable." The inscription was based on the following six criteria
(you can read the full document in multiple languages, here):
 Criterion (i): Venice is a unique artistic achievement. The city is built on 118 small islands
and seems to float on the waters of the lagoon, composing an unforgettable landscape whose
imponderable beauty inspired Canaletto, Guardi, Turner and many other painters. The lagoon
 of Venice also has one of the highest concentrations of masterpieces in the world: from
Torcello’s Cathedral to the church of Santa Maria della Salute.The years of the Republic’s
extraordinary Golden Age are represented by monuments of incomparable beauty: San
Marco, Palazzo Ducale, San Zanipolo, Scuola di San Marco, Frari and Scuola di San Rocco,
San Giorgio Maggiore, etc.
 Criterion (ii): The influence of Venice on the development of architecture and monumental
arts is considerable; first through the Serenissima’s fondachi or trading stations, along the
Dalmatian coast, in Asia Minor and in Egypt, in the islands of the Ionian Sea, the
Peloponnesus, Crete, and Cyprus, where the monuments were clearly built following
Venetian models. But when it began to lose its power over the seas, Venice exerted its
influence in a very different manner, thanks to its great painters. Bellini and Giorgione, then
Tiziano, Tintoretto, Veronese and Tiepolo completely changed the perception of space, light
and colour thus leaving a decisive mark on the development of painting and decorative arts in
the whole of Europe.
 Criterion (iii): With the unusualness of an archaeological site which still breathes
life, Venice bears testimony unto itself. This mistress of the seas is a link between the East
and the West, between Islam and Christianity and lives on through thousands of monuments
and vestiges of a time gone by.
 Criterion (iv): Venice possesses an incomparable series of architectural ensembles
illustrating the height of the Republic’s splendour. From great monuments such as Piazza San
Marco and Piazzetta (the cathedral, Palazzo Ducale, Marciana, Museo Correr Procuratie
Vecchie), to the more modest residences in the calli and campi of its six quarters (Sestieri),
including the 13th Century Scuole hospitals and charitable or cooperative
institutions, Venice presents a complete typology of medieval architecture, whose exemplary
value goes hand-in-hand with the outstanding character of an urban setting which had to adapt
to the special requirements of the site.
 Criterion (v): In the Mediterranean area, the lagoon of Venice represents an outstanding
example of a semi-lacustral habitat which has become vulnerable as a result of irreversible
natural and climate changes. In this coherent ecosystem where the muddy shelves (alternately
 above and below water level) are as important as the islands, pile-dwellings, fishing villages
and rice fields need to be protected no less than the palazzi and churches.
 Criterion (vi): Venice symbolizes the people’s victorious struggle against the elements as
they managed to master a hostile nature. The city is also directly and tangibly associated with
the history of humankind. The "Queen of the Seas”, heroically perched on her tiny islands,
extended her horizon well beyond the lagoon, the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. It was
from Venice that Marco Polo (1254-1324) set out in search of China, Annam, Tonkin,
Sumatra, India and Persia. His tomb at San Lorenzo recalls the role of Venetian merchants in
the discovery of the world – after the Arabs, but well before the Portuguese.