Venedig – Eine Geschichte der Instandhaltung

Venice maintains an ontological relationship with water. Yet, this relationship is not without conflict. From its origins, it is thanks to a centuries-old history of technological development and planning that the fragile, sometimes hostile, and insalubrious territory of the Venice lagoon has been made habitable. In this process, its rationales of economic development have always had to be reconciled with those of environmental protection. The lagoon is in a perpetual battle against its transitional geographical condition, whose natural destiny teeters between being engulfed by the sea or silted up as an extension of the mainland. For almost one and a half millennia, to oppose this fate, humans have changed the course of rivers, drained and reclaimed entire stretches of land, pumped water, consolidated mud, built embankments, canals, levees, dams, and bridges. By its own nature a mutable space, the Venice lagoon requires constant maintenance work, from the great engineering efforts of the Republic to the small-scale interventions of fishermen, millers, and farmers who have supported the subsistence of the city’s population for centuries.