A. Water Flows Through

The city of Venice is situated in a lagoon at the north end of the Adriatic Sea, surrounded by islands and marshlands. Viewed from the air, it appears to be one very large island, cut down the middle by a river that runs in a double-S curve, with several smaller islands to the south and east. But the close-up actuality is nowhere near as simple. The large "island" is actually a conglomeration of 117 islands, linked together by bridges. [1] The "river" is the Grand Canal, and since the water is salt, the senses experience more of the aura of a seaside port or beach than that of a riverbank. Further, the individual islands, separated from each other by sea water, appear to the pedestrian as solid land interrupted by frequent running streams that may be crossed with ease, owing to the multiplicity of bridges. To the waterborne, the islands retain their individuality, as it is the water, edged with looming outcrops of masonry, that provides the connecting medium.

Although the land is interpenetrated by the sea, so that the city comprises a dual network of land and water, the interface between the two is capable of surprising shifts. Deep within the city, the narrow canals run beneath the bridges, and, depending on the state of the tides, the waters usually do not rise to the level of the fondamente that edge the canals in many places. [2] The water is thus not invisible, but relegated to a subsidiary role. At the edge of the Grand Canal, the water is no higher, but because of the larger vista afforded by the open space across the Canal, and because of the Canal's width, the water seems to have more of a presence, and to present a significant barrier. Finally, at the edges of the city, the land stops, and the interface becomes much sharper. The viewer is reminded of his own island existence by the sight of other islands out in the lagoon, and by the sight of a broad expanse of water, marsh and sandbars.

Much of what is perceived by a modern visitor to Venice can be extrapolated backwards to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But the delicate and shifting perceptual relationship between water and land, already much altered by the efforts of Venetian residents in preceding centuries, has changed still more since that time, owing most to a continuing change in emphasis from water transport to transport by land. What follows is an examination of the city fabric as it existed during the period from 1490 to 1590, and an investigation of the related transportation patterns.

In Venice, it is difficult to discuss water without also bringing in land. It is almost as hard to talk about land without mentioning water. In the following two sections, the first on water, and the second on islands, it will therefore sometimes be necessary to mix the two subjects, even as they are interwoven in actuality.

Venice's water is salt and therefore has "alien" characteristics; [3] the city is situated in a lagoon, totally unattached to any land mass, and thus is completely surrounded by water. This water was and is not particularly deep, so that passage through the lagoon has always been treacherous, requiring boats of shallow draft, together with a detailed knowledge of the area, in order to avoid running aground. The islands of the city of Venice as we know them today were not originally all solid land; they were marshy patches containing somewhat more solid but still muddy areas, in contrast to the sandy underpinnings of much of the rest of the lagoon. [4] In order to build anything heavier than a wooden hut, pilings must be sunk into the ooze; therefore, even presumably solid land is actually permeated with water, and to dig beneath the surface is to reveal mud and bubblings of water. [5]

Venice is set in a tidal lagoon, so that the water ebbs and flows according to the time of day and the phases of the moon. Owing to the built-up nature of almost all of Venice, the retreat of the tides is not marked by a widening of the land area, for there is no sandy beach and no sloping shore, but rather by a lowering of the water against perpendicular masonry edges. Water thus does not become less of a barrier at low tide; it simply is not quite as intrusive as at other times. This tidal phenomenon was slightly different at the end of the fifteenth century, as tide levels were lower in relation to the land mass, so that rather than worry, as they do today, about whether at high tide the water might not overflow onto the fondamenta, the Venetians would watch the water, some feet below the built-up land level, rise and fall in their canals and along the shore.[6] The perceptual effect of this constant tidal cycle was to make the city seem insubstantial and not entirely anchored, as though the city itself were sinking into and ascending from the sea, rather than the sea falling and rising around the land. To a boatman in the lagoon, the rise and fall of the tide meant the appearance and disappearance of mud flats, sandbars and other hindrances to navigation, as the land itself seemed to rise and fall in the same rhythm as the built-up city.

Water, of course, creates certain visual effects; as it flows and ripples, the reflections move and catch the eye in a way that reflections off solid surfaces cannot. In a city permeated with water, the reflections are all around, painting non-moving surfaces such as buildings with motion. The light shimmers, and is evanescent. These water-imposed characteristics of light move the watery realm into the land-based one; even when water is not physically present, the stamp of its interaction with light permeates the visible landscape.

A second visual effect is one of flattening. A major action of water is to fill in that which it covers, an effect more obvious, perhaps, in earlier times, before all the canals were made into masonry channels by the filling-in of the land at their edges. Water always seeks its own level, and in so doing, it causes all differences of depth up to the water level to disappear, thus completely blanking out whole realms of topography. The result is that the city of Venice appears to be much more flat than those cities that are not threaded through with watery passages. There is therefore more of a consciousness of Venice as a surface.

The word "canale" is variously defined to mean "channel" or "canal." It is perhaps significant that the Venetian naming conventions for their canals apply the word "canale" only to the five widest canals, irrespective of length: the Grand Canal, the Giudecca Canal, the Canale di Cannaregio, and two bodies, both of which appear to have been artificially engineered inlets­the Canale della Misericordia, which connects two smaller canals with the Sacca della Misericordia boat basin, and the Canale della Galeazze, part of the Arsenale shipbuilding complex. All other canals in Venice take the name of "rio." These designations would appear to be a function of the Latin vocabulary. The word "canale" comes from the Latin for "channel" or "tube," while "rio" is a diminutive of the masculine "rivus," meaning "small stream" or "brook."[7] Historically, "canali" appears to have been the generic term; when Francesco Sansovino described Venice, he made reference to "i canali" rather than to "i rii," likening them to the veins of the human body.[8]

In Venice's early history, the distinction between land and water was rather blurred. The marsh, situated in the middle of the salt lagoon, was not clearly divided into "islands" and "canals," but rather into areas of more or less solidity. The more solid areas, as will be seen below, were filled in, while the more water-logged areas, with the obvious exception of the Grand Canal, which even then was clearly made up entirely of water, were over a period of centuries excavated into canals, clarifying the divisions between relatively solid land and free water. The canal banks were later built up and the canals themselves encased by masonry, thus making the separation permanent.[9]

The development of the canals was put under the control of the government at a fairly late date, but in a way that did not necessarily make a strong distinction between land and water. The charter for the Piovego, as reincorporated in 1282 out of four separate magistracies, was for a combined building magistracy, with jurisdiction of all questions of water, land or marshes, implying that there was a realization of the interconnectedness of the three.[10] Canals began to be walled in during the fourteenth century, thus allowing the land available for building to be extended, and making the land itself more important, delineating formerly indeterminate, marshy areas as actual islands.[11]

The characters of the Renaissance-period canals differed, as today, according to their sizes. The Grand Canal had a quality of display about it that was at least partially lacking for all the other canals. Although all building tended to turn its face toward a canal rather than toward land, on the Grand Canal that face consistently was grander and more memorable than if it had been built overlooking a lesser canal. The broader Canal Grande meant improved sight lines, with the possibility of seeing a house from a distance, a chance generally not offered elsewhere in Venice. The Ca' Foscari, in its position at the southern bend in the Grand Canal, with what the nineteenth-century historian Fabio Mutinelli called "un incantevole prospetto" commanding a view in both directions, occupied a location that, in the sixteenth century of both Sanudo and Francesco Sansovino, was universally acknowledged as the best spot from which to view any sort of river-borne activity such as races or boat processions.[12] Conversely, a house on the Grand Canal was one that would be seen by the whole world. It was not enough simply to have "arrived" by building a house on the Grand Canal; one must also live up to the neighborhood by showing off to the entire city. Further, although houses built on the rii obviously had water access, buildings on the Grand Canal were somewhat easier to approach, particularly by more than one boat at a time, with generous mooring space which could be extended into the Canal as the boats were tied up with an end pointing toward the water's edge; the smaller canals were less easy to negotiate because of their narrowness, and space to "park" boats was limited, as the boats would have to be tied up parallel to the canal edge.[13]

Smaller canals offered more private settings. There was still public circulation on the smaller canals, but with less display, and the character of that display was different than that seen on the Canal Grande. Instead of grand elaborate façades, smaller decorative details would hold sway. In the older sections such as San Giovanni Crisostomo and Santi Apostoli, there was more display of elaborate balconies and roundels than would be found in more recently-developed areas such as the northern part of the Cannaregio, where the faces that houses turned to the long straight canals were, with such notable exceptions as the Palazzo Mostelli[14] and the Palazzo Zen, simple and not fashioned with display in mind.[15]

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