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Anna
Somers Cocks
Chairman
The Venice in Peril Fund
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The
role of The Venice in Peril
Fund
What can a relatively small
charitable organisation such
as The Venice in Peril Fund,
the British Committee for
the Preservation of Venice,
do for the city? We are not
the Ford Foundation or the
Getty Foundation, and in any
case not even their means
would suffice to safeguard
Venice from the rising waters.
Our income consists of donations
large and small made by British
people who love Venice and
are concerned about its future.
And then there is the famous
gastronomic invention called
the Pizza Veneziana; thousands
of portions are sold in the
various Pizza Express outlets
and for each one sold, Pizza
Express makes a 25p donation
to The Veneziana Fund, which
in turn gives half its income
to Venice in Peril.
We have
been known as ‘The Venice
in Peril Fund’ since
1971, but in fact we went
into action immediately after
the great flood of 1966. At
that moment, many Venetian
monuments, churches and works
of art were in serious danger
of irreversible decay and
we set out to collect funds
for their recovery and restoration.
Since those beginnings we
have financed the....More>>>
How
much longer for Venice?
How do we put a value on our
cultural heritage? How much
does Venice matter to people
who have never seen it? How
much does it matter to the
Venetians themselves and to
those who have travelled to
see it? More>>>
Changing
conditions and a warning
Venice is particularly susceptible
to climate change. In 1900,
St Mark’s Square flooded
around 10 times a year; now
it is around 60 times a year.
The water level in the city
is permanently too high nowadays—25cm
above the mean water-level
reference point established
in 1897—and this is
already eating away at the
brickwork of the buildings.
More>>>
