The Brilliant Engineering That Made Venice: How a City Was Built on Water

Many of us have put off a vis­it to Venice for fear of the hordes of tourists who roam its streets and boat down its canals day in and day out. To judge by the most vis­i­ble of its eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, the once-mighty city-state now exists almost sole­ly as an Insta­gram­ming des­ti­na­tion. It was­n’t always this way. “Despite hav­ing no roads, no land, and no fresh water, the Vene­tians man­aged to turn a mud­dy swamp into the most pow­er­ful and wealth­i­est city of its time,” says the nar­ra­tion of the Pri­mal Space video above. Its “unique lay­out of canals and bridges woven through hun­dreds of islands made Venice incred­i­bly acces­si­ble, and it became the epi­cen­ter of all busi­ness.”

Venice, in oth­er words, was at its height what world cap­i­tals like Lon­don or New York would become in lat­er eras. But on a phys­i­cal lev­el, it faced chal­lenges unknown in those cities, chal­lenges that demand­ed a vari­ety of inge­nious medieval engi­neer­ing solu­tions, most of which still func­tion today. First, the builders of Venice had to bring tim­ber from the forests of Croa­t­ia and dri­ve it into the soft soil, cre­at­ing a plat­form stur­dy enough to bear the weight of an entire urban built envi­ron­ment. Con­struc­tion of the build­ings on top proved to be a tri­al-and-error affair, which came around to using bricks with lime mor­tar to ensure flex­i­bil­i­ty on the slow­ly shift­ing ground.

“Instead of expand­ing out­wards like most cities,” Venice’s islands “expand­ed into each oth­er.” Even­tu­al­ly, they had to be con­nect­ed, though “there were no bridges for the first 500 years of Venice’s exis­tence,” not until the Doge offered a prize for the best design that could link the finan­cial cen­ter of Rial­to to the rest of the city. But what real­ly mat­tered was the test of time, one long since passed by the Ponte di Rial­to, which has stood fun­da­men­tal­ly unal­tered since it was rebuilt in stone in 1591. The com­bi­na­tion of bridges and canals, with what we would now call their sep­a­ra­tion of traf­fic, did its part to make Venice “the most pow­er­ful and rich­est city in Europe” by the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry.

Even the rich­est and most pow­er­ful cities need water, and Venice had an abun­dance of only the “extreme­ly salty and undrink­able” kind. To meet the needs of the city’s fast-grow­ing pop­u­la­tion, engi­neers built wells sur­round­ed by sand-and-stone fil­tra­tion sys­tems into Venice’s char­ac­ter­is­tic squares, turn­ing the city into “an enor­mous fun­nel.” The relat­ed prob­lem of waste man­age­ment neces­si­tat­ed the con­struc­tion of “a net­work of under­ground tun­nels” direct­ed into canals, flushed out by the motion of the tides. Venice’s plumb­ing has since been brought up to mod­ern stan­dards, among oth­er ambi­tious engi­neer­ing projects. But on the whole, the city still works as it did in the days of the Doge, and that fact alone makes it a sight worth see­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

Watch Venice’s New $7 Bil­lion Flood Defense Sys­tem in Action

A Relax­ing 3‑Hour Tour of Venice’s Canals

Venice’s Canals Have Run Dry Dur­ing a Win­ter Drought, Leav­ing Gon­do­las Stuck in the Mud

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.