Many of us have put off visiting Venice, fearing the hordes of tourists roaming its streets and taking boat rides down its canals every day. Judging by the most visible parts of its economic activity, this once-mighty city-state now exists almost exclusively as an Instagram destination. It wasn’t always this way. “Despite having no roads, no land and no fresh water, the Venetians managed to transform a quagmire into the most powerful and wealthy city of its time,” says the voiceover for Venice. Primal Space video above“Venice’s unique arrangement of canals and bridges around hundreds of islands makes it incredibly accessible and a major business hub for all.”
In other words, Venice was experiencing the same kind of heyday as later world capitals like London and New York. But on a physical level, Venice faced challenges those cities never experienced, challenges that called for a variety of ingenious medieval engineering solutions, most of which still work today. First, Venice’s builders had to transport timber from Croatian forests and hammer it into the soft soil to create a foundation strong enough to withstand the weight of the city’s entire built environment. Building on top of that was a trial-and-error process, eventually settling on bricks coated in lime mortar to ensure flexibility in the gradually shifting ground.
Instead of “spreading outwards like other cities,” Venice’s islands “spread inwards.” Eventually, the islands needed to be connected, but “for the first 500 years of Venice’s existence, there were no bridges.” It wasn’t until the Doge offered a prize for the best design to connect the Rialto Bridge, the financial center, to the rest of the city. But what really mattered was the test of time, and the Rialto long ago passed that test. It has stood essentially unchanged since it was rebuilt in stone in 1591. The combination of bridges and canals, and what we would now call the separation of traffic, helped make Venice “the most powerful and wealthy city in Europe” by the 15th century.
Even the richest and most powerful cities need water, but Venice only had an abundance of the “very salty and undrinkable” kind. To meet the needs of the city’s rapidly growing population, engineers built wells surrounded by sand and stone filtration systems in Venice’s characteristic squares, turning the city into a “giant funnel”. Related waste management problems necessitated the construction of a “network of underground tunnels” that led to canals washed away by tidal action. Venice’s plumbing has since been brought up to modern standards, along with other ambitious engineering projects. But overall, the city functions much as it did in the Doge’s time, and that fact alone makes it a sight worth seeing.
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Based in Seoul, Colin MaOnershall Writing and broadcastingHe has written papers on cities, languages, and cultures, and his projects include the Substack newsletter. Books about cities And books A city without a state: Walking through 21st-century Los Angeles. Follow us on Twitter CollinhamOnershall or Facebook.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
