VENICES NEXT RENAISSANCE

After the pause, the ancient lagoon city reconsiders its future and paves its way forward.

- EMIKO DAVIES.

It doesn’t take long for this city to work its magic on me. Just one look at that long, low horizon shaped by the lagoon and I find myself breathing a sigh. Venice never gets old: the water-lapped maze of streets and canals; the campi (squares) where people positioned themselves in the sun; ducking down side streets in search of the best sugar-crusted frittelle in a bar piled with baccalà mantecato (whipped cod). Enshrouded in fog or under a beaming sun, Venice continues to take my breath away.

Experiencing Venice without mass tourism over the past two years was a highlight of the pandemic: canals ran crystal clear, and with no crowds, Piazza San Marco was empty and the best seats on the vaporetto always free. But this quiet “pause” made some of the immediate threats to the city glaringly obvious too. With fewer residents than ever, Venetians have taken this moment to ask themselves how their city can remain liveable – a question that sits alongside the issue of rising sea levels and how a city built on water can cope in a warming world?

Venice, a uniquely improbable yet resilient city, was born on a network of 118 islands connected by about 400 bridges and countless canals, its buildings held atop wooden piles driven into the mud, creating an urban environment that UNESCO rightly describes as an “architectural masterpiece”.

Rosa Salzberg, a historian of Venice, is hopeful and points out in her foreword to my book