Francesco Luzzini: "The Floating Price of Beauty: Water (and Land) Management in Early Modern Venice"

Francesco Luzzini (University of Florence), IT

Abstract:

"Throughout its history, the Republic of Venice engaged in a centuries-long effort to preserve the unstable balance between land and sea in its Lagoon, striving with equal zeal to avert both shoaling and submersion. The actions taken included periodical dredgings, the building of channels, embankments, dams, and works of hydraulic engineering like the diversion of rivers and streams on the mainland. Unlike the prevalent (and well-known) flooding issues that afflict Venice and its Lagoon today, during the early modern period the most pressing environmental threat was the shoaling caused by the sediments carried and deposited with the inflowing streams. The actions taken by the Serenissima to contrast this process made this city a hub for scientific and technological innovation: eventually, Venice’s ability to manage a constantly changing environment produced many interconnected consequences that shaped the history of the Lagoon and, more generally, of a significant part of Northern Italy, as well as their culture, society, economy, and landscape."