Context 153 - March 2018

C O N T E X T 1 5 3 : M A R C H 2 0 1 8 53 When history’s mistakes become today’s heritage Notes from the chair On a very crowded vaporetto heading for the station, my then six-year-old daughter was found to be weeping. The reason, it transpired, was ‘I don’t want to leave Venice’. She spoke for all of us and, I dare say, a goodly number of the other passengers. It is a sentiment expressed in a myriad of elegant ways by scores of literary figures over the years. The appeal of Venice is indisputable; it is the embodiment of the concept that people enjoy being in historic environments; it was a destination for its own sake long before it was found by the romantic poets. Their enthusiasm was kindled by Wordsworth’s 1802 sonnet ‘On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic’, which refers to the events of 1797 when supposedly neutral Venice antagonised Napoleon and, after many years of decline, finally had to surrender its sovereignty. During a recent week there I found myself repeatedly musing on two major issues that have dogged Venice for centuries which encapsulate the problems of the historic environment everywhere: to what use can a post- imperial city be put – use being the key to the preservation of fabric – and how do you deal with the ravages of the environment? Venice is constructed on many millions of timber piles driven into the mud of the lagoon. (In the city’s heyday they gave rise to the near deforestation of Dalmatia.) That such foundations are liable to subsidence is no surprise and is remarked on by Lord Byron (who lived in Venice from 1816 to 1819) in the fourth Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, his epic semi-autobiographical poem: ‘Venice, lost and won,/ Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,/ Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose!” Not only does this condition continue today, it is worsened by the threat of rising global sea levels. Several times a month the acqua alta results in flooding of some streets, sometimes severely ‘It is possible to dislike Venice… and those who are not of this opinion often find themselves wishing that the others were only more numerous.’ The world heritage listing for Venice remarks on the efforts that have been made in introducing new arts and education establishments to the city to diversify its economy, but the underlying problem is intractable. The high cost of maintenance and restoration is not compatible with affordable housing or many of the lower value uses that a city needs to function properly. And the resident population is still in decline. In the Church of the Frari stands the enormous monument to Doge Giovanni Pesaro (died 1659). The typical free-style Venetian baroque of Baldassarre Longhena seats Pesaro aloft in the position normally occupied by the Virgin Mary, surrounded by eight allegories of his supposed virtues, a bit of a whitewash by all accounts. This stands on an entablature which is itself supported by four gigantic telamones of black Africans in ragged clothing, additionally burdened enough that tourists are strongly advised to check the tide tables. An alleviation project is in the offing: the controversial Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (MoSE). But this has been more than 50 years in the making and it is not certain how effective it will be when it finally comes into operation later this year. One hopes that it will reduce the water erosion of the fabric of Venice, and that it will not have too much impact on the ecology of the lagoon, which is also of international importance. Of course the ‘new use’ to which Venice has de facto been put is tourism, although this is as much a problem as an answer. Far be it from me to wish to deny anyone the experience of Venice. But turismo mordi e fuggi (hit-and-run tourism) requires considerable public management yet does little for Venice’s economy and even less for the upkeep of its fabric which, like historic fabric elsewhere, is expensive to conserve authentically. Nor is this new: Henry James, in his 1882 essay on Venice, remarks wryly: