Venice is drowning: will one of the world's most beautiful cities disappear beneath the waves? - Special Report

THERE'S REALLY NO PLACE like Venice, the floating city on Italy's northeast coast, off the Adriatic Sea. In Venice, the streets are canals and the buses and taxis are boats. More than 12 million tourists from around the world come to Venice each year to ride along its canals, view its great squares and art-filled palaces, eat in its world-class restaurants, and stay in its elegant hotels. The city is one of the world's great treasures.

Yet Venice has a monstrous problem: The city is sinking slowly, but surely, into the sea. If something isn't done--and soon--there won't be any Venice to visit.

Venice has had an intimate relation with the sea for many centuries. The city is built on 118 small islands connected by more than 400 bridges. Some tourists are ferried around in gondolas--long, slender boats guided by gondoliers who each use a single, long pole called a sweep to push each boat along. Most Venetians travel on speedboats and vaporettos, or "water buses," which shuttle passengers up and down the Grand Canal, the wide waterway that courses through Venice's center, past palaces and modern office buildings.

At the heart of Venice is St. Mark's Square, which surrounds the massive, five-domed Church of St. Mark. The Campanile, a tall bell tower, stands nearby, as does the Doge's palace. When Venice was an independent country, it was ruled by magistrates called Doges (DOHJ-es), who used the city's location to dominate the nearby seas. The pink stone palace was once the central building of Venice's sea empire, which included territories in the eastern Mediterranean and Adriatic seas for 1,000 years. (See "Empire of the Sea" on page 4.)

Motorboats and Pigeons

St. Mark's, the Doge's Palace, and Venice's other great stone buildings may look sturdy, but they rest on wooden posts driven into the muddy waters of the Adriatic--and are under attack as never before.

Motorboats violently churn the surrounding water, damaging the wooden foundations of buildings. Air pollution from factories on the Italian mainland has been damaging many older buildings. Even pigeons are on the attack. The city is overrun with more than 120,000 of the birds, which leave tons of acidic droppings that eat away at the ancient stone buildings.

The greatest threat to Venice, however, is flooding, caused by the city's sinking and the sea's rising. Built on soft soil, Venice sinks slowly under its own weight. Venice's sea level rose about five inches a century until 1990. From he early 1930s until the mid-1970s, city authorities pumped underground water from under the city to supply factories. That accelerated the damage, causing the city to sink about one-fifth an inch per year. In the past 50 years, more of Venice has been overtaken by the sea than in all its history. St. Mark's Square is the city's lowest point, and today high tides flood it about 90 times a year. When the high waters come, tourists scatter. City workers rush to assemble temporary walkways over the old stones, and cafe owners take their tables to higher floors and pass out high boots to customers.

Now Venice must battle the effects of global warming. Many scientists believe Earth is getting warmer due to gases released by automobiles and factories.

The increase in warmth is slowly melting the polar ice craps, raising sea levels around the world. Some scientists argue the the sea levels of all major seas could rise as much as 18 inches in this century, flooding coastal cities from North America to Asia to Africa and Europe. If those scientists are right, high tides or storms could flood Venice on a regular basis even in the next few years.

History of Flooding

Venice has dealt with floods, or acqua alta (high water), since its beginnings. Records show that major floods soaked the city in A,D. 589, 885, and 1268. At those times, Venetians responded by raising the level of the city's buildings. Archaeologists have found that parts of Venice have been built up as high as 13 feet above their original foundations over the years. The sea, however, has been unrelenting.

On November 4, 1966, a high tide sent water levels 4 feet above normal, flooding much of the city. Then the southern Mediterranean wind known as the sirocco blew in, keeping the floodwaters from receding. When the next high tide hit, the city went under. Venice's historic center was under 6 feet of water. Power failed and gas tanks broke. Thousands of drowned rats floated into the canals. Rats that survived scurried up the sides of buildings, terrorizing stranded residents.

Many Venetians were trapped for three days. The flood caused millions of dollars in damage and ruined many valuable paintings and statues.

The 1966 flood seemed to be Venice's wake-up call. The Italian government, supported by cultural groups from around the world, took up the cause of saving Venice from the sea. But they could not agree on what to do--and as yet almost nothing has been done. Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, agreed to fund a $2.5 billion plan to save Venice. The plan endorsed by Berlusconi's government has been dubbed MOSE, after Moses, the biblical figure that called upon God to part the Red Sea.

The design of MOSE includes a system of 79 hollow steel panels, each weighing 300 tons. The panels would lie flat on the lagoon floor during normal weather, but would swing up on giant hinges during dangerously high tides to form a protective wall where the lagoon opens to the sea. To activate MOSE, operators would pump air into the panels, which would then float to the surface. Engineers say the city could raise the entire system in just 30 minutes.

If work on MOSE begins this year, as Berlusconi hopes, the project could be finished as early as 2007. But will that be soon enough?

Critics say that the rise of sea levels from global warming might make MOSE useless in less than 50 years. And there are other concerns. To put it nicely, Venice is an old city with an ancient plumbing system. Venetians flush human and animal wastes into the canals; the city depends on high tides to flush the filthy water out to sea. MOSE could well make Venice smell like a giant septic tank.

There seems to be only one thing everyone involved can agree on: If something isn't done, and quickly, Venice's days are numbered.

DOING MORE ... Venice has been the home and the inspiration for many famous artists and musicians, such as Giovanni Bellini, Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Gabrieli, and Titian. Research one of these famous artists and find out how Venice influenced his work.

RELATED ARTICLE: Empire of the sea.

VENICE TODAY MAY BE A TOURIST-FRIENDLY "LIVING MUSEUM," but at the time most of the city's great buildings were built, Venice was a world power, the center of an empire that was both feared and admired throughout Europe and Asia.

But Venice did not build its empire overnight. In the year 1000, Venice's influence only extended across the northern end of Adriatic. Meanwhile, the middle and southern parts of the sea were in the hands of pirates who prevented safe trade between Venice and the rich trading ports of the eastern Mediterranean

By the 1200s, however, led by a series of able doges, such as Doge Enrico Dandolo (in power from 1192 to 1205), Venice had built up a great navy. The navy wiped out the pirates and conquered many of the islands and coastal areas along the Adriatic.

At that time, Italy was not a single country, and independent cities such as Venice and Genoa often fought one another for control of rich trade routes. While Venice grew to be a strong sea power on the Adriatic, the city of Genoa emerged as a rival sea power on the opposite side of what is now northern Italy. The growing power of the two cities led to a series of wars between Venice and Genoa.

After a major victory over Genoa in 1380, Venice took control of the trade routes across the Mediterranean. By 1400, the Venetian navy was 3,000 ships strong.

But Venice's days as a world power were numbered as soon as the Americas were opened up to exploration and trade. Suddenly, the sea lanes controlled by Venice were less valuable. In 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte of France conquered Venice and ended its empire. In 1866, Venice became part of what has become modern-day Italy.

Get Talking

Ask students to look at the title of the special report. How could a city that already has canals instead of streets, boats instead of cars or trucks, be drowning? Ask the students how many of them have heard of Venice (Italy, not Venice Beach California)? In what country is Venice? What things do they associate with Venice?

Background

Legend has it that Venice was founded on March 25, 421, by Romans fleeing barbarian invasions. The first great industry of the city, the one that established its power and prosperity, was salt-making from the surrounding sea. Salt had been very scarce in the Middle Ages, and its price was high. For hundreds of years, Venice had a monopoly on salt making in Italy and southern Europe. The town grew rich and began to build ships, which engaged in trade with the East. During the Crusades, Venetian ships were used to carry passengers to the Holy Land. Those who couldn't pay for the voyage were used by the Venetians to help build the city's growing colonial empire in Asia Minor and Egypt.

By the end of the 14th century, the population of Venice had grown to over two hundred thousand, which made Venice the most populous city of the Middle Ages. The government of the city was a private affair of a small number of rich merchant families. They elected a senate and a Doge, but the actual rulers were members of the famous Council of Ten. The Council of Ten ran a highly organized system of spies and professional killers, who kept watch on all citizens and quietly removed those who might be dangerous to the smooth functioning of the city.

Doing More

Have students take a period of Venetian history--any period--and report back to the class. An interesting time is the time of the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) when the Venetians actually diverted the crusade to take over Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine empire. The Fourth Crusade demonstrated the growing power of Venice and set the stage for the expansion of its empire

Link It

* Two excellent history sites: http://www.doge.it/cultura/history.htm http://www.republicofvenice.com/history.html

* A site for a tour of today's Venice: http://www.invenicetoday.com/

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