Venice

[waimarie]

I have been intrigued how they built the city of Venice in the swamp / lagoon. I can understand the depth is possibly very shallow but, even nowadays with all our technology, to drive piles and then build upwards in such a magnificent way, would be some achievement. I can understand isolating a small area, draining off the water, driving the piles and constructing a single building not a whole city !!! I have googled and tried 'wikipedia' but nothing seems to explain how they did this all those hundreds of years ago. Still puzzled.

[jno]

I think it wasn't like building in the middle of the ocean, it was on dryish land in a marshy lagoon. Probably the earliest houses just sat on the ground, but bigger and heavier ones built later as people became richer would have needed longer and stronger piles to support them. Venice came to be a very wealthy city, in control of major trade routes between east and west, so there was plenty of money around for this type of thing. It wouldn't all have been built at once, but over several centuries. A big job all right but not an impossible one for a rich city.

[nickmo]

Hi Wai..info may help at: http://www.canaan.demon.co.uk/roleplaying/venice/VenGeog-Arch.html

[Toureman]

Good links above, Amsterdam was built in a similar way.

[waimarie]

Many thanks to everyone.. Altogether an excellent explanation which now makes a lot of sense. Still an amazing achievement though. The comment from Toureman opens up the thought that St.Petersburg would have been constructed along similar lines. Why does mankind do such wonderful things and then have the urge to blow it all up ??

[rojash]

Judging from that diagram, In a Pickle, they had some awfully big pencils in those days!