To read this article in French, click here.
Whatever else about the world, there’s one advantage to being alive now: Travel is easier than ever before. All the faraway places one heard about on TV as a child are now within reach after spending 10 minutes online to buy a flight. Once that plane lands, Google Maps makes it much simpler to get around. The old adage rings true: The world is truly small now.
Another reason this generation is particularly lucky is that some of these sought-after destinations – some having been around for centuries – may not last much longer.
“Ugh, I suppose you want to see Venice,” my wife said. Being Italian, she had already been there. Located in the same country she grew up in, it didn’t hold as much mystique for her as it does for the rest of the world. However, having spent our honeymoon in the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy, we were only a short train ride away from the historical city.
The City of Venice was declared the capital of the Republic of Venice in 697 – and being a major trade center for silk, grain and spice, remained a wealthy municipality for most of its history. In the 9th century, it became the world’s first international financial center. Originally founded by refugees seeking to escape Germanic and Hun invasions, the city was built on wooden piles over a shallow lagoon. Today, it currently spreads over 118 small islands connected by more than 400 bridges. The independence of Venice as a city-state, nonetheless, came to an end once it was captured by Napoleon in 1797, and then it eventually became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866. Ultimately, from architecture to opera to its iconic gondolas, Venice’s history is as rich as it comes.
In addition to all of that, however, the assessment of my wife held some truth: It was also hot, crowded and expensive. Our hotel room seemed to have been built in the 1970s and then left untouched until we arrived, like something out of a Wes Anderson film but without the charm. Dinner was three times steeper than in nearby cities, and it was hard to maneuver around the other tourists taking pictures on the narrow pathways between canals and buildings. Still, having long heard about the gondolas pushed by pinstriped gondoliers and seeing it in movie after movie, such inconveniences were worth tolerating for at least one day.
Perhaps more than that, it was an opportunity future generations might not have.
Venice is disappearing. Traditionally sinking 1 to 1-and-a-half inches per century, that rate was hastened in the 1950s and 1960s with the drilling of artisanal wells. The process of land subsidence accelerated when more water was taken from the ground beneath buildings. Last century alone saw the city disappear 9 inches, putting some windows and doors into the canals. More alarming, however, is the ascending sea level. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the sea is expected to rise 25 to 40 inches by 2100, putting Venice essentially underwater.
No one is entirely sure if Venice can be saved. Technically, the lumber piles the city is sitting on can be replaced with longer ones. However, this is a lengthy and expensive process, and will require a constant flow of funds over decades – the type of financial support that is typically unable to be sustained by governments over long periods of time. Many statistical models show Venice falling, becoming a modern-day Atlantis in the sea.
Still, Venice is trying to safeguard its future. International cooperation has rallied to attempt to protect this beloved city. A system of mobile tide gates, called MOSE, was proposed in the 1980s and recently finished in the three inlets to the lagoon. MOSE helps prevent the severity of flooding from cyclical high tides, which have become more intense in recent years. Another proposition being taken seriously is to pump seawater back into the land beneath Venice, which is estimated to eventually lift the city another handful of inches over several decades. While natives are increasingly leaving the city, others are encouraging scientists, architects and artists to collaborate together to find a way to protect Venice.
In the modern age, it’s easy to be lulled into a belief that everything we’ve created around us is permanent. However, in the course of history, entire civilizations have come and gone, sometimes without explanation. We may have a greater scientific understanding and better technology than in the past, but in some ways the challenges in front of us have also grown larger. The world is indeed small, but also sometimes fragile.
Here’s rooting for Venice.
