Lagoon

The city of the Venetians, by divine providence founded in the waters and protected by their environment, is defended by a wall of water. Should anybody in any manner dare to infer damage to the public waters he shall be considered as an enemy of our country... This act will be enforced forever.A 16th-century edict

The largest wetland in Europe, Venice’s Lagoon is one of its wonders, a desolate, often melancholy and strange, often beautiful and seductive ‘landscape’ with a hundred personalities. It is 56km long and averages about 8km across, adding up to some 448 sq km; half of it, the Laguna Morta (‘Dead Lagoon’), where the tides never reach, consists of mud flats except in the spring, while the shallows of the Laguna Viva are always submerged, and cleansed by tides twice a day.

To navigate this treacherous sea, the Venetians have developed highways of channels, marked by bricole – wooden posts topped by orange lamps – that keep their craft from running aground. When they were threatened, the Venetians only had to pull out the bricole to confound their enemies; and as such the Lagoon was like an enormous moat, always known as ‘the sacred wall of the nation’.