Venice: a history of maintenance

Venice maintains an ontological relationship with the waters. Yet, from its origins, it is thanks to a centuries-old history of techniques, ideas, and projects that the fragile, sometimes hostile and insalubrious territory of the Venice lagoon has been turned habitable, combining the reasons of economic development with those of environmental protection. The Venice lagoon is in a perpetual battle against its transitional geographical condition, whose natural destiny would be that of disappearing and become a part of the sea or an extension of the land. For almost fifteen hundred years, in order to oppose this fate, man has changed the course of rivers, drained and reclaimed entire parts of territory, pumped water, consolidated mud, built embankments, canals, bridles, dams and bridges. By its own nature a mutable space, the Venice lagoon is a constant work of maintenance, from the great engineering efforts of the Republic to the micro-interventions of fishermen, millers and farmers that supported the subsistence of its population for centuries.