Is Venice Truly Sinking? Here’s What You Need to Know About the Floating City.
Venice, often referred to as the floating city, has sparked curiosity and concern: is it actually sinking? Venice consists of 118 islands that are separated by canals and connected by over 400 bridges. Nestled in a famous lagoon on the Adriatic Sea, both Venice and its lagoon were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. With a history spanning just over 1,600 years, Venice has evolved from a maritime empire and major port to a global center of art and culture, drawing roughly 25-30 million visitors each year to explore its stunning blend of Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance architecture.
Recently, with billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos planning to marry in Venice this June, the debate over the threat of overtourism has intensified, alongside concerns that the city is literally and figuratively sinking under its own weight. To understand the human and environmental threats facing Venice’s future, AD consulted Renaissance Venice historian and associate professor at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine, Michelle Laughran, and Anthony Berklich, founder of the luxury travel platform Inspired Citizen. Here’s everything you need to know.
How Was Venice Built?
To appreciate how Venice was constructed, it’s crucial to first understand why. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD due to internal and external factors, Venetian merchants were left unprotected, necessitating a means to defend themselves from neighboring nations and potential barbarian invasions: thus, they built a floating city. The city’s location at the northwestern end of the Adriatic Sea, along a crescent-shaped lagoon, was ideal because the lagoon’s shallow waters are protected by a line of sandbanks whose three inlets allow for the city’s maritime traffic, according to Britannica.
However, the marshy ground was not a stable foundation for a city, so ingenious Italian builders and engineers sourced a combination of larch, oak, alder, pine, spruce, and elm wood from abroad to create millions of pointed wooden poles, which they then drove deep into the clay beneath the lagoon’s marshy waters, with the tips pointing downward.
As detailed by a BBC illustrated report, workers known as battipali drove these poles as deep as possible until they became solid and sturdy, the friction between the poles and the ground strong enough to support a building. The layout of the poles began from the outer edge of the structure and moved towards the center of the foundation in a spiral pattern, with the heads cut off to create a flat surface below the sea level.
Atop these wooden poles, which varied in length from just under a meter to 3 meters, workers constructed the wooden platforms that have supported Venice’s iconic landmarks such as St. Mark’s Square and the Basilica, the St. Mark’s Bell Tower, and the Doge’s Palace for centuries. While it is unclear exactly how many millions of wooden poles are beneath the city, the BBC notes that there are 14,000 wooden poles in the foundations of the Rialto Bridge and 10,000 oak trees under St. Mark’s Basilica.
The foundations of Venice have avoided decay over the centuries due to the lack of oxygen exposure and the effects of salt water on wood; however, they have not completely avoided damage. According to the BBC, anaerobic bacteria attack the cell walls of the wood fibers, damaging it. Fortunately, the bacteria act slowly. Seawater fills the holes dug by the bacteria, and the combination of wood, water, and silt creates a perfect pressure system that has kept the foundations standing for centuries.
This brings us to the most frequently asked question about Venice…
Is Venice Sinking?
The more accurate question is: Is it Venice that is sinking, or is the sea level rising? The best answer is: both.
“If it’s true that parts of Venice that were once the highest points of the city are now among the lowest – Rialto, for example, was originally called Rivo Alto – it’s largely a misconception that Venice is sinking under the sea,” says Laughran. “For centuries, there has been some compaction of the underlying sediments under the weight of the city’s buildings and then, in the 1950s and ’60s, subsidence occurred due to the extraction of groundwater and natural gas, which was stopped in the early 1970s when the damage was noticed. Most of the water threatening Venice today, however, comes from rising sea levels, not from the ongoing sinking of the city itself.”
Venice has long struggled with its irregular climate and lagoon ecosystem, with flooding so frequent that raised wooden walkways are used to help people traverse the city during high water events. A particularly catastrophic flood occurred in 1966, when the water level rose to nearly two meters above sea level.
The rising waters due to climate change have not helped. As reported by the BBC, Venice experienced the second worst flooding event on record in November 2019, when the tide peaked at over two meters above sea level. More than 80% of the city was underwater, causing damage estimated at nearly one billion euros.
Moreover, Venice’s buildings are indeed sinking, but not as much as one might think. According to the BBC, the piles under the city’s foundations were pushed further into a layer of compressed clay. “Many of the buildings built on these unstable foundations have shifted and, in many cases, have begun to sink into the mud. Historical groundwater extraction has exacerbated this impact, and Venice has sunk about 15 cm in the last century.”
Will the Mose Barriers Save Venice?
After a 2024 report by Italian scientists declared that Venice could be submerged by 2150, global attention turned to the MOSE (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico) project, a flood barrier system designed to protect the city and lagoon from flooding. The system consists of 78 movable gates located at strategic points that can be raised to temporarily isolate the lagoon from the Adriatic Sea during high tides and minimize major flooding events.
Due to the complexity of the construction and the slow pace of Italian bureaucracy, it took decades before the MOSE project saw the light of day. The project was first conceived in the 1980s, and construction officially began in 2003, with the original goal of completing it by 2011. The project faced a surge in costs and delays, but was finally tested for the first time in 2020.
Can We Visit Venice?
Yes, but there are ways to do so responsibly. First, consider the fact that it is estimated that tourists in Venice range from 75,000 to 110,000 per day during the high season, and that the city has lost more than 60% of its resident population since the 1950s, largely due to overtourism and high living costs. This means that there are literally not enough residents to welcome, serve, and host such a large influx of people on a daily basis.
“Venice is one of those destinations that are magnificent and majestic, but suffer greatly from overtourism,” says Anthony Berklich, founder of the luxury travel agency Inspired Citizen. In his work, Berklich books over 200 trips to Venice for clients every year, but he has never booked a trip to Venice for a group of more than eight people. “When I plan a trip for a client, I always steer them towards more conscious ground partners who prefer to handle small numbers of tourists.”
The city has tried to control the tourist population with mixed results. In 2021, the Italian government banned large cruise ships from sailing in the center of Venice (specifically the Giudecca Canal, after a 2019 incident), but ships under 25,000 gross tons are still allowed. Last year, a trial fee of five euros was applied to visitors who did not stay overnight in a Venetian hotel, including day tourists and cruise passengers, in an attempt to contain the crowding, but the number of visitors remained high. This year, the fee has been doubled to 10 euros for last-minute travelers, and many residents argue that it is not an effective means of discouraging excessive tourism.
On the contrary, Berklich argues that the best way to be mindful of one’s impact is to focus on the timing of the trip and to do one’s own research on vendors. “Venice is crowded all year round… I always say that the best time to visit is from the beginning of October to the first two weeks of December, and then again from March to the first two weeks of May.” While acknowledging the higher costs, Berklich recommends choosing tour companies or travel agencies that have an “eco-conscious” mindset.
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