Venice – Italy, was built on more than 100 individual islands, planting wooden piles, * 5 meters long (not * 25 m), in the unstable soil of the lagoon.
Surrounded by salt mud and in the absence of oxygen underwater, the piles of wood do not rot but constantly petrify, forming the perfect foundations of the city.
Venice has always had to coexist with the water around it and with the erosion it causes, especially on the shores. That’s why the latter are protected by the white stone of Istria. In many cases, to widen the construction areas, entire areas of the lagoon were filled.
Before they started building the buildings facing the canals, the Venetians planted piles of wood in the ground to make it stronger.
As stated in the Historical Atlas of Serenessima, “the foundations of all buildings are made of oak poles or very strong hard posts, which always endures underwater… These are sank firmly into the ground and then fixed with large cross pieces, and filled between the posts with various rock and cement fragments, which makes a stable and strong foundation thanks to coagulation and adjustment. ”
Very thick boards and a layer of stone blocks have been placed on top. This is where they started to raise the foundation walls. In other words, it is like Venice was built on an upside down forest.
Buildings had to adapt to this unstable terrain, for this reason one of the characteristics of Venice’s buildings is their extreme elasticity, able to adapt to ground movements.
Walking down the streets, you may have noticed walls that are rounded or slanted inward, this happens because the technique with which they are built means that the walls do not open outward to prevent collapse, but rather tend to lean on the floors of the walls buildings are also made of wood, a lightweight and elastic material and are fixed to walls with metal rods that resist collapsing outward from the wall elements.
Where did all that wood come from?
Cansiglio has always been the forest of the Republic of Serenissima, which needed to preserve productive and efficient wooded areas that were used to supply timber to the Venice arsenal for the construction of oars for the starlings, the famous Venetian ships.
As we can read in the Historical Atlas of the Serenissima, the oakwood came from the regions of Trevise, Frioul and later also from Istria, while the fir and the slabs of the mountains, Valsugana, Bassano and Cadore. The wood has arrived along the rivers Adige, Brenta and Piave.
The logs were chained together to form rafts and pushed by the current all the way to Venice. Here they reach the Fondamenta delle Zattere, to then be sorted. Some logs were transported to the Arsenal of Venice, others to San Biagio and Giudecca where firewood was stored Other logs followed the banks and were taken to where they were needed for construction: “Aulch mainly for compacting soil, such as this was made for the San Marco bell tower, larch for the rafts that serve as foundations: to place boards like a floor on the head of the poles cut to a uniform height; while for the boats need a more precious wood, oak, for the woodwork and edging, larch for inside, fir for boat masts.
Even Venice’s DIY are tree trunks that have inhabited the lagoon for centuries and give it a unique and fascinating identity.
Once this wood is aged and eroded it is replaced and the DIYers that have reached the end of their life are recovered and reused to create the Venice Coins items. Each object preserves a “piece of Venice” and travels the world to tell the centuries-old story of this city of art and culture.
Venice – Italy, was built on more than 100 individual islands, planting wooden piles
