Il prezzo ondeggiante della bellezza. L’equilibrismo di Venezia tra acqua e terra nel corso dei secoli

[Machine translation] Many of the interventions promoted by the Serenissima Republic throughout its history to preserve the fragile lagoon balance triggered (often fierce) controversies of a political, economic, environmental and social nature. Controversies that raged both within the republican borders and between the Republic and neighboring states. As is often the case in water management, in fact (and as Venice learned dearly), solving problems at one point means causing new ones elsewhere. But another effect of this centuries-old labor was that in the Venetian Lagoon human history and natural history were intertwined to such an extent that it would be almost impossible, and certainly useless, to treat them separately. Not surprisingly, in the river of debates that sprang from — and which, in turn, shaped — the Serenissima's effort to manage an environment in constant change, we recognize the same tangle of environmental, scientific, social, political, cultural and economic problems with which we must deal with at a global level today.