interesting read from 1999

Venice's long war with rising water

As one of the most improbable cities on Earth, Venice has never failed to astound those who consider its precarious position, right at the water's edge.

"There lie your houses built like seabirds' nests, half on sea and half on land," wrote a regional official in ?23 A.D. "The solidity of the earth is secured only by willows and wattle [poles and thatch], yet you fear not to place so frail a barrier between yourselves and the sea." The same sense of awe greets modern visitors, who ponder how a city came to grow at a site virtually devoid of dry land. "Who in their senses, one wonders, would leave the fertile plains of Lombardy to build a settlement--let alone a city--among these marshy, malarial wastes, on little islets of sand and couchgrass, the playthings of current and tide?" asks John Julius Norwich in A History of Venice (1982, Knopf).

Archaeologists are only now, however, coming to appreciate just how much Venice has struggled to stay dry over the centuries. In a study of sea level shifts going back 6,000 years, a team of researchers has determined that Venice has been battling rising waters since its birth, with the pace of change accelerating markedly in this century.

For the rest of the story:

I liked the way this started out so descriptive.

Venezia IS an amazing city with a very interesting history.