Who Thought Building Venice in the Middle of a Lagoon was a Smart Idea?
Q: Why did Italy deem it a good idea to build Venice, considering its tendency to sink into the ground it’s built on?
A Historian’s Take: “By the early 15th century, the territory ruled by the Venetian Doge and Senate would come to encompass the whole of northeastern Italy, in addition to overseas colonies) and was recognized as the post powerful polity in Italy. This drove people to the city, adding to its density; the lagoon became the city’s frame, its surroundings. Today, we say the lagoon belongs to the city; however, historically, it was the city which belonged to the lagoon. Indeed, quizzing an early modern city official on issues impacting livability in the city they would probably talk to you about combating silting and ensuring that the city’s canals remained navigable, even redirecting the rivers that fed the lagoon.
“So you see, for much of Venice’s history construction was not dense enough to make people worry about the soft, sandy ground structures were built on. That’s not to say storms, tides, and the constant force of waves against people’s front doors weren’t issues: they certainly were, as demonstrated by fate of the above-mentioned community of Malamocco, which would be swept away by a storm (and centuries later, the Venetians would even find it necessary to construct a sea-wall on the sandbars on the edge of the lagoon). However, the countless difficulties of living on the islands, from malarial mosquitoes to the simple difficulty of constructing rainwater cisterns on low islands subject to tidal flooding, meant that building collapse was not really a pressing priority. When Byzantine soldiers first disembarked in Venice, the sparsely populated islands with homes separated by gardens and orchards, inhabited by isolated fishermen that seemed to have little or no concerns with what was happening on the mainland, must have seemed like an attractive place indeed to accept grants of land.”