1. James Morris, Venice (London: 1983), 116. Guy Perocco and Antonio Salvadori, Civiltà di Venezia (Venice: 1973), I, 234, provide a map showing canals and former canals, the latter of which appear to number about 40. The map suggests that the island count was higher by approximately 65 islands, or more than 50 per cent, before filling-in operations commenced.
2. Acqua alta appears to be a relatively modern phenomenon. The physical evidence suggests that average water levels were at least a foot lower in the Cinquecento than they are now. A fondamenta (plural, fondamente) is a peculiarly Venetian usage for a sidewalk running along the edge of a canal.
3. In particular, the water may not be drunk without desalinization procedures, and objects exposed to salt air corrode more rapidly than do items exposed to ordinary damp. Before the 19th and 20th centuries, Venice's drinking water came from rainwater, collected on housetops and then drawn off into cisterns via networks of pipes. At times when even the large public cisterns were insufficient, water was brought from the mainland on barges (Pietro Casola, Canon Pietro Casola's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494 [Manchester: 1907], 132; Richard Goy, Venice: The City and its Architecture [London: 1997], 48). Fynes Moryson thought he saw a class distinction: "For the common sort use well water, and raine water kept in cesternes; but the Gentlemen fetch their water by boat from the land" (Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary Containing His Ten Yeeres Travell [Glasgow: 1907], 163).
5. Richard J. Goy, The House of Gold (Cambridge: 1992), 103, 118; Goy, Venice: The City and its Architecture, 51. These pilings, called tolpi, were rough-cut stakes, ranging anywhere from under six inches in diameter up to two feet; the length could be up to fifteen feet. The pilings were driven vertically into the ooze; planks were laid on top of these. Thomas Coryat provides a detailed description of the process: "The foundations of their houses are made after a very strange manner. For whereas many of them are situate [sic] in the water, whensoever they lay the foundation of any house they remove the water by certaine devices from the place where they lay the first fundamentall matter. Most commonly they drive long stakes into the ground, without the which they doe aggerere molem, that is, raise certaine heapes of sand, mudde, clay, or some other such matter to repell the water. Then they ramme in great piles of woodde, which they lay very deepe, upon the which they place their bricke or stone . . ." (Thomas Coryat, Coryat's Crudities [Glasgow: 1905], 308).
7. Salvatore Battaglia, Grande dizionario della lingua Italiana (Turin: 1961); Manlio Cortelazzo and Paolo Zolli, Dizionario etimologico della lingua Italiana (Bologna: 1979); C.T. Lewis, An Elementary Latin Dictionary (Oxford: 1891). Cf. "canale" and "rio."
8. Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, 3: "Et percioche discorrono i canali per la città in quella maniera che fanno le vene per lo corpo humano; formando diverse Isolette in numero pur troppo grande, parte fatte dalla natura, & parte dall'artificio. . . ." (Sansovino, the son of the architect Jacopo Sansovino, wrote the most important sixteenth-century guidebook to Venice. Unlike such works as Sanudo's short Laus Urbis Venetae [discussed in chapter III] and Sabellico's formal encomium Historie venitiane, Venetia città was a well-organized description of the city, its topography and buildings, with particular reference to local history.) Fynes Morison described them similarly: "Channels of water pass through this City (consisting of many Ilands joyned with Bridges) as the bloud veines of mans body so that a man may passe to what place he will both by land and water," (Moryson, An Itinerary, 163). Marin Sanudo, in Laus urbis Venetae, BCV ms. Cicogna 69, ff. 8v-19r, as translated by David Chambers in Venice: a Documentary History 1450-1630, edited by David Chambers and Brian Pullan (Oxford: 1992), 6, distinguishes between "canali" and "rii," noting that "there are innumerable waterways called rii which lead out of the Grand Canal and pass through different neighborhoods." Coryat, Coryat's Crudities, 357, neatly encapsulated the reverse of this perception of canals and bridges when describing the prison as "being divided from the Palace by a little channell of water, and againe joyned unto it, by a marvellous faire little gallery that is inserted aloft into the middest of the Palace wall East-ward." Canals could connect; they could also divide, depending on the point of view.
9. The process is described in detail in Crouzet-Pavan, "Sopre le acque salse", particularly chapters 1, 2 and 3. The dating is difficult to determine, but it appears that the process of consolidation of marshy areas began as early as the seventh century, while the final encasement of the canal banks in the Cannaregio was still underway in the sixteenth century.
10. Crouzet-Pavan, "Sopre le acque salse", 88-89. Crouzet-Pavan notes that there was a very large and specific vocabulary that distinguished between matters relating to each of the three, but that the practicalities of dealing with improvements (bonifications) that dealt with each of the three divisions, not necessarily in turn, particularly from a legal standpoint, necessitated their practical combination.
12. Fabio Mutinelli, Annali urbani di Venezia dall' anno 810 al 12 maggio 1797 (Venice: 1841), 461. Fynes Moryson concurs, mentioning the house "of the Fascorini [sic] an old building, but having the best prospect of all the rest" (Moryson, Itinerary, 194). See Goy, The House of Gold, 16-19, for a discussion of canal-side housing at this time.
13. Goy, The House of Gold, 16. Marin Sanudo, in his discussion of the sights of the Grand Canal, notes that "on either side there are houses of patricians and others; they are very beautiful, costing from 20,000 ducats downwards; . . . there are also a few, but very few of less value [than 3000 ducats], which are being rebuilt. And the houses which overlook the said canal are much sought after, and are valued more highly then the others, particularly those near Rialto or St. Mark's. . . . There is an infinite number [in the city generally] of houses valued at upwards of 800 ducats, with rooms having gilded ceilings [etc.] . . ." (Sanudo, Laus urbis Venetae, 5). In other words, the cheapest new house on the Grand Canal was worth at least four times its equivalent in a less desirable neighborhood. Coryat, Coryat's Crudities, 308, points out the beauty of the houses on the Grand Canal: "If you will take a view of the fairest palaces that the whole City yeeldeth, you must behold these Palaces of the Canal il grande . . . [f]or this place presenteth the most glorious buildings in all Venice, save for the Dukes Palace. . . ."