Why Venice is Europe’s Worst Placed City

Select video clips courtesy of Getty Images

Special thanks to MapTiler / OpenStreetMap Contributors and GEOlayers 3

[CheapCharlieChronicles]

What a lot of people don’t realize is Venice was one of the largest cities in Europe up until the start of he 19th Century. It’s not just a tony tourist destination but the capital of one of Europe’s greatest Republics and Empires in history. It lasted for a thousand years until Napoleon.

[lo]

Side note: Venice itself (the islands) only has 55k inhabitants. The other 200k live in the mainland (which counts as the same municipality), where tourists don't go

[batosato]

I recently visited Venice. The current population is around 50k while the rest lives in mainland. A lot of families are leaving Venice due to rising rents. One tourist guide even told me that seeing kids playing on the streets of Venice is very rare.

[Nikioko]

In fact, Venice is brilliantly placed, which is the reason why it became a major naval power and one of the richtest countries in Europe. During the Age of Migration, Germanic tribes pillaged the Italian cities many times. Thanks to its location within a swamp, Venice was easy to defend and was never sacked.

[peabody]

The irony: Venice used to actually raise its buildings every few decades, but about 400 years ago the buildings became "culturally significant" and so that process stopped. Once the buildings were no longer being lifted, it sealed the cycle of flooding that was then made worse by other factors/decisions.

[jtgd]

“Why Venice’s geography sucks”

Becomes wealthiest city on the continent due to geography

[lucaciprian]

I "love" how in every single "italian/greek related" videos from abroad there's always the same "totally unrelated" to the whole culture theme song with lute/mandolin.

[brunoalves-pgeo]

7:59 Correction: Vasco da Gama didn't discover the Cape of good hope. It was discovered long ago and a main obstacle for the Portuguese for some time. It was known as the Cape of torments. Eventually Bartolomeu Dias managed to cross it and it became the Cape of Good Hope, opening the way for Vasco da Gama who was the first european to reach India by boat.

[drd]

Actually, the 260k population figure is quite misleading. It represents the population of the whole Venice metropolitan area, much of which is actually built on the mainland, with regular streets and cars (source: I live there). The population of the historic city is less than 60k people, ever decreasing because of insanely high rents and the difficulties of living in such a peculiar place. Even people who would like to continue living there are often forced to move on the mainland because they just cannot afford otherwise. So all the percentages quoted in the videos are 4x higher, which is even more impressive.

[lifebloodcore]

It's ironic how Venice was once great at keeping people who didn't live there out for strategic reasons but now one of its biggest problems is too many foreign visitors coming in at a time

[biancahava]

Hello from New Orleans! I can certainly sympathize with chronic flooding. My childhood subdivision was built on "reclaimed" land and as time progressed the pumps would be more frequently out-paced and the roads were getting more prone to turning into a shallow river. The swamp reclaims all.

[chrishoo]

La Sereníssima was supremely well positioned to be at the western end of the Silk Road & bring luxury goods into the center of Europe. Another plus was that Venice was the cleanest city in Europe because its sewerage was flushed out to sea twice a day with the tides. They did suffer harshly from being the natural entry point of the plagues.

[ShortHax]

When you spawn on an island with a single tree

[daandanx]

Still waiting for the "Why Prague is the most normal city in the world" video

[Nikioko]

Venice became rich because of its monopoly for Silk Road trade. That's why Portugal and Spain tried to bypass that monopoly by finding alternative trade routes with India and China.

[MakeBetterDocuments]

I was in Venice during those 4 of the worst 10 floods ever in November 2019. It was really tragic watching the local stores loosing their stock and cleaning out their shops four times in a week.

[pamady]

New Orleans : "Finally a worthy opponent, our battle will be legendary"

[HarryWessex]

Venicians must have absolutely loved the lockdown, where their city was finally quiet. I'd honestly loved to her a local talk about how much they enjoyed it.

[hj-ctqi]

during a study abroad in tuscany, i visited venice for a few days, and my visit unfortunately coincided with the acqua alta (high water). my friends and i wandered through the streets suddenly flooded with six inches of seawater, trying to find our way back to our hotel. as we did, i came across a graffiti message in english stenciled onto one of the raised platforms built specifically for pedestrians during the floods. when i read it, it chilled me to the bone:

"venice belongs to the water
not to you."

[FigureOnAStick]

One thing I kept coming back to was that the first Venetians were refugees who came to the lagoon for the safety of its environment. These were folks who had once lived in the heart of the Roman Empire, who had to flee their homes as the world around them basically collapsed. They abandon their entire lives and sought a practical solution to their problem and found one. Not only did they find one, but they found one that turned out to be of exceptional advantage thanks to its environment, and this small city practically became an empire.

Then, the tides of history shifted, and once again, they found themselves once again gripping to that empire as it fell apart. then all at once. Everything about the city that once gave it power: its geography, its industry, and its culture, is now strangling it to death. It's still happening slowly now, but it really could fall apart with one more bad roll of the dice. The citizens are just trying to live their lives, but it does seem like there's quite literally no future in this city.

While this is quite sad, I think that there is a great deal of hope in looking at the foundations of Venice, and the story of its founders. The founders survived their apocalypse, as real and terrifying to them as our own is to us. They survived because they focused on their environment: they assess their surroundings and choose a location that was not only safe, but also in a truly excellent position given their new circumstances, and it allowed them to direct their own fate for centuries. The modern day Venetians might very well have to abandon their city, and with their loss, the loss of a cultural artifact of incalculable value, as did their ancestors. Venetians survived and then grew to thrive before, who's to say they couldn't do it again in a new place? Perhaps, we shouldn't view this as the ending of the story of Venice, but as the beginning of another chapter in their history.