It’s the “floating city” but also the sinking city. In the past century, Venice has subsided by around 25 centimeters, or nearly 10 inches, CNN reported.
Meanwhile, the average sea level in Venice has risen nearly a foot since 1900.
It’s a tortuous pairing that means one thing: Not just regular flooding, but an inexorable slump of this most beloved of cities into the watery depths of its famous lagoon.
For visitors, its precarious status is part of the attraction of Venice — a need to visit now before it’s too late, a symbol that humanity cannot win against the power of nature.
For Venetians, the city’s island location has for centuries provided safety against invasion, but also challenges.
Tides have got ever higher and more frequent as the climate crisis intensifies. And the city sinks around two millimeters a year due to regular subsidence.
But what if you could just... raise the city? It sounds like science fiction. In fact it’s the idea of a highly respected engineer who thinks it could be the key to saving Venice.
While the Italian government is currently spending millions of euros each year raising flood barriers to block exceptionally high tides from entering the lagoon, Pietro Teatini, associate professor in hydrology and hydraulic engineering at the nearby University of Padua, says that pumping water into the earth deep below the city would raise the seabed on which it sits, pushing Venice skyward.
By raising the level of the city by 30 centimeters (just under 12 inches), Teatini believes that he could gift Venice two or three decades — during which time the city could work out a permanent way to fight the rising tides.
“We can say we have in front of us 50 years [including the lifespan of the MOSE] to develop a new strategy,” he says, according to CNN. “We have to develop a much more drastic project.”
