VENICE – A MAGICAL SANCTUARY ON A LAGOON

There are places on the face of this Earth that might disappear before we all get a chance to see their beauty. Ironically most of those places will disappear because so many want to see their beuaty. At Travel World Passport we will present those places – we hope you enjoy the list of Top Ten Places to See Before They’re Gone. In a recent post we discussed Galapagos Islands. Today it’s time for some european gem – Venice. Water is the lifeblood of Venice. Most cities think only of water supply or waterfront property; Venice thinks of water as roadway, marketplace, port: in short, its glue, holding the city together. But it’s also it’s greatest enemy.

What most people don’t know, however, is that water is also Venice’s greatest threat, and we’re not talking about obvious disasters like hurricanes or tsunamis. Venice’s greatest threat, one which is beginning to make it a truly endangered city, is more subtle, more gradual. Rising ocean levels present this most unique and beautiful of cities with its most dangerous challenge: a slow and inevitable death, one which can only be prevented if something is done to stop further ice cap deterioration resulting from global warming.

In order to understand just how this problem has developed in addition to how it can be solved, we need to look at some facts. Over sixteen hundred years ago, the seal level of the Adriatic was more than six feet lower than it is today. This may not sound like much, but remember that Venice is a canal city. Imagine standing on the shoreline of a beach, and then add six feet of water. Unless you’re quite tall, you would be completely underwater! Venice faces a similar issue. As a city that sits literally at sea level, even a moderate amount of sea level rise can prove disastrous.

Now you see, tt is not just the modern man wrong doing that threatens Venice. This city has been slowly sinking for hundreds of years due to the shifting sediments of the lagoon it was built on. The annual high tide that floods the main piazzas has been increasing over the past century. And now, the $7 billion floodgate project to protect the Italian city has been delayed thanks to protests that it’ll be too difficult and expensive to maintain. So take your time and see it before it dissapears. What is most worth seeing now before tha apocalypse? Hop on a vaporetto – a Venetian waterbus – and set out into the lagoon to explore the islands of Murano, which is famous for its glass, and Burano, known for its lace. Take advantage of the view from Piazza San Marco, which tends to get flooded during the annual high tide. And frankly it is much better when dry!