November 17, 2019 Comments Off on “Floating city” Venice in vintage postcards Views: 850 Nostalgia, Postcards

Venice is one of Italy’s most famous cities, widely known as the “City of Water”, “City of Canals”, “The Floating City” or “Sinking City” to name just some of its many designations.

A popular tourist attraction, with an abundance of history behind its name, Venice is regularly facing unusually high tides that are coming from the Adriatic Sea, called “acqua alta.”

While the high tides would normally cover the city streets in a few centimeters of water, there have been those instances such as now, that Venice floodings look terrible if not apocalyptic.

November 2019 has marked the worst flooding in the last half of a century for Venice, prompting authorities to almost entirely shut down the city and declare a state of emergency. By some estimates, this most recent series of floods have submerged more than 80% of Venice, with water dangerously claiming iconic sites such as St. Mark Square.

An old postcard of St. Mark Square in Venice, Italy

You are also right to worry that the exceptional floodings of this kind may persist in the future. While the latest floods have been greatly attributed to a combo of full moon induced high tides and high winds pushing water from the shallow Adriatic Sea into Venice, climate scientists note that exceptional tides (those over 1.4 meters) have become much more common during the past two decades.

An old postcard displaying one of Venice’s numerous, authentic canals. The city has a total of 177 canals within its boundaries.

The November floods were caused by exceptional tides reaching as much as 1.9 meters (6 feet), putting at peril the city’s beloved art and architecture dated to various epochs of European history.

A vintage postcard depicting two gondolas, Venice’s traditional, flat-bottomed rowing boat, appropriated for the conditions of the Venetian lagoon.

By some projections, Venice might even entirely disappear by 2100 alongside other cities such as Dhaka in Bangladesh, Bangkok in Thailand, Houston in Texas, or Jakarta in Indonesia.

According to the Associated Press: “The 1,600-year-old city is built on uncompacted sediment, which is settling. Venice’s Tide Office said that because of the combined effect of the city’s settling and the rising of the sea, the water is now 30 centimeters (12 inches) higher against the buildings than it was when record-keeping began in 1873.”

Venice is famed also for its bridges and has as many as 417 within its boundaries.

A solution that might work to protect this authentic city and its treasure of medieval, Baroque and Renassaince extravaganza, might be the completion of the MOSE project. Initially called Project Moses, the project entails building a massive seawall barrier with 78 mechanical gates that would rise up and protect the city from incoming high tides. The project, however, has been marred in scandal.

Another intriguing Venice fact is that houses in Venice are enumerated by districts, not streets. Monuments, shops, and landmark sites are regularly used by postmen for orientation and reaching the correct address.



Hopefully, if the MOSE project is successfully completed, it will shield Venice from its imminent threats–the rising seas and state of sinking. For the moment, it still remains to see the final outcome and scope of damage from the current floods that have hit the city.

Postcards contributor: Gabriela Stachurska Goseva

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Tags: city news, Italy, news, venice, Vintage postcards