01/11/2006

Not waving but drowning?

Burlington Magazine

Over the years numerous articles in this Magazine have referred to the past destruction or alteration of the buildings of Venice and the disappearance or dispersal of their paintings and furnishings. In this issue alone we find Joshua Reynolds sketching works that no longer exist in buildings long since demolished; paintings by Canaletto datable to what is and is not on the skyline; and the building over of the campo in front of S. Francesco della Vigna. But in spite of great incursions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Venice today would be perfectly recognisable to a citizen of, say, 1700. As with any city, decay and renewal are inseparable, but in Venice, having more than its fair share of the 'fatal gift of beauty' that Byron ascribed to Italy, one is more conscious than anywhere else of a city impaled on its history.

It is forty years ago this month (4th November 1966) that Venice was overwhelmed by an exceptional acqua alta that submerged the city for a day. Internationally, however, concern was almost entirely focused on Florence, which was flooded at the same time, and with much more disastrous results. The Florentine flooding was unexpected and unusual, and the extent of the destruction was shocking. In Venice acqua alta has increasingly become a regular occurrence, an irritating fact of life for its citizens and a hazard met with almost amused insouciance by tourists who simply remove their trainers and carry their cameras a little higher. But, as is well known from numerous reports and commissions, the increasing frequency and altitude of the flooding threatens not only much of the city's infrastructure but its very survival.

The events of November 1966 spurred a rethinking of ways to preserve Venice and acted as a trigger for international aid and funding. But even before then there were concerns for the city's future. Appalling plans for its transformation were seriously proposed, and the industrial zone of Marghera on the lagoon was expanding in the 1940s and 1950s as a visual affront to the city and a drain on its population. Tidal management and the state of the lagoon, pollution, subsidence and the effects of mass tourism were all under consideration, alongside the plight of buildings in need of urgent attention. Unfortunately, and in spite of considerable improvements (especially in the matter of subsidence and the rescue of many buildings), the problems remain the same, and Venice's future is still in the balance. The contemporary needs of the city and the preservation of its past continue to be the two ends of this familiar tug-of-war. But, so equal in strength are the two factions that a state of immobilismo has most often been the result.
 
The latest strategy is the construction of underwater floodgates at the three inlets to the lagoon from the sea, work on which was begun in 2003. One objection to this project, known as MOSE, is that it is based on a now outdated prediction of sea-level change. Another is that the barriers will upset the ecosystem of the lagoon. While Prime Minister Prodi has commendably held firm to the initiative, Massimo Cacciari, the Mayor of Venice, wavers. Political change and uncertainty colour public opinion, and many Venetians object to this costly (?4.6 billion) government-backed intervention.
 
'Venice in Peril', one of the many committees formed in the wake of the 1966 flood, recently hosted a debate in London with the motion: 'Enough money has been spent saving Venice'. Naturally the motion was defeated, but it provoked the airing of some startling facts and radical proposals. Professor Sir David King, the British government's Chief Scientific Adviser, emphasised the international inertia over global warming through the calamitous rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; if this continues and, for example, all the ice on Greenland were to melt, 'no plan could save Venice' from being submerged. Professor Joseph Rykwert concentrated on the dangers of a monoculture of tourism but suggested that tourist numbers would soon decline and that the city must find other solutions for its economic survival. But Professor John Kay argued that tourism would inexorably increase over the next decades and that 'the sea of tourists may be a lot more threatening than the Adriatic'. He put forward a detailed course of tourist management that, if alarming in its themepark controls, at least stared reality in the face.
 
Hanging in the air above all these arguments and projects are the entangled questions: what exactly does preservation mean and for whom is Venice to be preserved? While fifteen million people visit the city each year, the resident population has dwindled to 60,000, exactly half of what it was in 1848. Nothing can ever be rescued from the passage of time. Preservation lasts only so long, especially in so volatile and artificial a construct as Venice. There are those who deplore much of the restoration that has been undertaken in recent decades, from unsuitable materials and colours to a fundamental misunderstanding of a building's meaning and history(1). Others take a more laissez-faire view, thankful that a building has been repaired and put to use, even if it has been wounded in the process by a boiler outlet in a façade that is, in any case, quite the wrong yellow for Venice. Will the tourists have noticed before they depart in their vast cruise ships? Most will have seen nothing but the very centre of the city, which they are bound to think has been superbly preserved to provide them alone with the experience of a lifetime.
 
In Venice, culture, politics and emotional debate are inextricable. Rather than radical slogans, objective scientific data should inform all decisions in the coming decade that will determine the future of the city.
 
To that end, 'Venice in Peril' sponsored a report of the physical state of Venice and its lagoon(2). Let us hope it is being read by all those involved in the imperative negotiations for Venice's survival.
 
1 The conservative position is put forward in G. Pertot: Venezia "restaurata": centosettanti anni di interventi di restauro sugli edifici veneziani, Milan 1988; English edition: Extraordinary Maintenance, London 2004.
 
2 C.A. Fletcher and T. Spencer, eds.: Flooding and Environmental Challenges for Venice and its Lagoon: State of Knowledge, Cambridge 2003.

Copyright Burlington Magazine 2006