How Venice was built on water

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  1. The entirety of Venice is built on a marshy group of islands barely emerging from the lagoon (the deepest canal, the Grand Canal is 5 m deep).

    Many of the building techniques employed in the palaces of Venice are unique of Venice and created in reaction to the special challenges in building in a such an environment.

    The whole of Venice is built on stilts that required a lot of wood (the Rialto bridge alone sits on a foundation of 11,000 wooden piles). The wooden piles stabilized the muddy ground and made it possible to erect most of what you see today, centuries after their construction.

    The layer of piles is deep under water, yet it is stable. This is because they sit in an anaerobic environment that prevents bacteria from decomposing the wood. On top of it, the brackish lagoon water deeply penetrates the wood and deposits minerals that turn the wood almost into solid rock.

    This on the condition that the deepest layer is not exposed to the elements, which is why the foundations were covered with a layer of limestone, Pietra d’Istria.

    Big ships or motorboats create waves that erode the stone and slowly expose the foundations to the elements, putting in danger the integrity of the buildings.

    The wooden piles were sourced by specially appointed officials of the republic of Venice from the Alps, Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro and transported on water to Venice.

    The Republic inflicted heavy punishments to those who would illegally log in the forests it owned and pioneered an early form of sustainability to make sure the forests weren’t depleted.

  2. Had no idea. Always thought Venice was built on land and then it was flooded and the people adapted the city to live with it.

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