Why Venice is Europe’s Worst Placed City

What a lot of people don’t realize is Venice was one of the largest cities in Europe up until the start of he 19th Century. It’s not just a tony tourist destination but the capital of one of Europe’s greatest Republics and Empires in history. It lasted for a thousand years until Napoleon.

Interesting that your map of "Venetian colonies in the Mediterranean" also shades the area containing the Republic of Ragusa, Venice's _primary_ but today-oft-forgotten rival in the rich trade city game. It also has a fascinating history and deserves a video of its own!

As a Venetian, I loved this video. I have to point out a couple of things though:
0:25 The Municipal border of Venice include Mestre (a city on the mainland), other islands like Murano and Lido. The residents in the actual city surrounded by water are only 50'000. This also means that all the ratios tourist/resident in the videos are actually higher.
3:15 I see you are a man of culture (Civilization) as well

I visited Venice in 1948 with my parents. I would say I am one of the oldest tourists to visit the city still alive who is not in a nursing home.

One thing I kept coming back to was that the first Venetians were refugees who came to the lagoon for the safety of its environment. These were folks who had once lived in the heart of the Roman Empire, who had to flee their homes as the world around them basically collapsed. They abandon their entire lives and sought a practical solution to their problem and found one. Not only did they find one, but they found one that turned out to be of exceptional advantage thanks to its environment, and this small city practically became an empire.
Then, the tides of history shifted, and once again, they found themselves once again gripping to that empire as it fell apart. then all at once. Everything about the city that once gave it power: its geography, its industry, and its culture, is now strangling it to death. It's still happening slowly now, but it really could fall apart with one more bad roll of the dice. The citizens are just trying to live their lives, but it does seem like there's quite literally no future in this city.
While this is quite sad, I think that there is a great deal of hope in looking at the foundations of Venice, and the story of its founders. The founders survived their apocalypse, as real and terrifying to them as our own is to us. They survived because they focused on their environment: they assess their surroundings and choose a location that was not only safe, but also in a truly excellent position given their new circumstances, and it allowed them to direct their own fate for centuries. The modern day Venetians might very well have to abandon their city, and with their loss, the loss of a cultural artifact of incalculable value, as did their ancestors. Venetians survived and then grew to thrive before, who's to say they couldn't do it again in a new place? Perhaps, we shouldn't view this as the ending of the story of Venice, but as the beginning of another chapter in their history.

Side note: Venice itself (the islands) only has 55k inhabitants. The other 200k live in the mainland (which counts as the same municipality), where tourists don't go

If only Venetians would ask people of Europe's other historic sea-trading, formerly ultra rich, massively overtouristed city consisting of hundreds of canals and thousands of centuries-old brick buildings slowly sinking into the swampy ground: Amsterdammers.
Amsterdam's water levels are completely artificial, managed by a government authority. There are no floodings in Amsterdam, neither did the Zuiderzee turn into a stinking swamp as the video predicted for the Venice lagoon.
Amsterdam is Venice's rainier sister city. And it already found a solution for Venice's problem.

I'm from Brazil, but I appreciate how you're constantly mentioning the presence of Portugal in the history of great navigations. Often with native English speaking channels they tend to ignore the presence of naval Portugal in history as if only England has done its part.

It was one of the very first things I noticed when I walked into my hotel after getting off a speedboat outside, the floor is slightly tilted to allow any floods that happened to drain away, they also showed us their hydraulic pump. I was there for about four days before our cruise left, but I was pretty sad to see that the overwhelming majority of people on the cruise came in literally the evening before or even just came across from the mainland that morning. So it’s essentially being used and abused. Yeah the tourist bring money, but considering how many of the cruise tourists don’t actually spend all that much money it ends up being a problem not a bonus. Plus all those cruise companies play all the ports in the Mediterranean off each other so they can squash as much out of them as possible and then they have the gall to provide their own travel in company so the locals at the different ports don’t get to benefit from the excursions to the fullest extent either. It’s a beautiful city, it’s weird and very alien when you have grown up with cars and roads and streets but it’s mesmerising and sad when you can literally see the water lines on the buildings and you know what the overall prognosis is.

Let’s take the moment to appreciate how much effort RealLifeLore puts into his content for us. Great job

The irony: Venice used to actually raise its buildings every few decades, but about 400 years ago the buildings became "culturally significant" and so that process stopped. Once the buildings were no longer being lifted, it sealed the cycle of flooding that was then made worse by other factors/decisions.

I'd love to see a follow-up video on what effects overtourism have on Venice's gepography problems. The video mentions the problem quite often, but I fail to see how it contributes to increased flooding.

It's insane that property values in Venice keep inncreasing. They started going up a lot about 20 years ago. You'd think the price would plummet as the flooding got worse each year.

4:51 While Venice certainly dominated Mediterranean trade, I think I would say that Venice mostly dealt with the east of the Italian boot whereas Genoa then Sardinia Piedmont dealt with the western Mediterranean… Venice was definitely stronger so you were right but I always think Genoa deserves a shoutout

Yes the eastern trade was a major factor in the wealth of Venice but they had other MAJOR economic drivers, especially they dominated the salt trade in much of Europe (in fact was their major trade for much of their history and was made in their Greek colonies). And this salt trade brought in far more in taxes at several times in the long history of the republic. Which does not even account for their finished good exports of glass (since they basically invented the European glass traditions in Murano) and famously sought after rope (yeah sounds silly now but was a major business in the Vento at one time)

“Why Venice’s geography sucks”
Becomes wealthiest city on the continent due to geography

Great video with lots of correct info, I just have 3 corrections.
The MOSE system should be translated as Moses, to whom it clearly refers.
Venice in not on 1 island and not thousands, they are 118.
The migration that founded the city was only from the neighbouring town of Altino.
The graphics show the whole of northern Italy fleeing to a village...

I was in Venice during those 4 of the worst 10 floods ever in November 2019. It was really tragic watching the local stores loosing their stock and cleaning out their shops four times in a week.

I visited Venice 10 years ago in 2011, during the summer peak tourist season. It was already crowded with tourists, everyone bumping shoulders along the main alleys. I can't imagine how much worse the crowding must have gotten now.

Would it be possible to redirect the previously diverted sediment depositing rivers? Although it may shrink the lagoon over time, it could save the architecture and history of the city

It's ironic how Venice was once great at keeping people who didn't live there out for strategic reasons but now one of its biggest problems is too many foreign visitors coming in at a time

I think it's interesting that fixing part of the initial problem, that being opening the lagoon to the adriatic, is now seen as a bad thing because we're so godawful at handling our own garbage, to the extent that the idea of "handle the garbage issue in the lagoon" isn't even brought up as a solution

What if they took all their boats out of the water? With increasing population means more boats, more boats means more water displacement. Being that it is a lagoon this could actually add up.

In some magazine a long time ago I read about a technology where they somehow would pump silt or other material slowly beneath the foundation of a single hour in Venice, slowly raising it bit by bit, until it was lifted up by like 10 centimeters or so. Maybe that tech could be implemented for the entire city, but that would be a huge undertaking, lifting up an entire city that is built in the ocean.

Rome was also not initially an ocean-going civilization. When they first tried anchoring their fleets on the English Channel, the tide tore them apart. But they eventually built naval bases on the North Sea.

Still waiting for the "Why Prague is the most normal city in the world" video

It is really cool to start this by explaining the factors that made Venice so damn successful so that you can reveal it’s those exact same factors that are kicking it’s ass now

I'm happy this video covers all the issues causing the flooding problem in Venice. It's not just blaming climate change, but everything that contributed.

I remember visiting Venice it was beautiful but to fall in that water is nasty it stunk especially in the summer, also living there would be so inconvenient I remember there were people who’d fall in the water in winter, also some front doors were in weird places, magical place to visit but to live in would be a nightmare in my opinion

Got lucky when I was there - no flooding but also one of the rare occasions there were no cruise ships in town... got 2 days and 2 nights seeing this beautiful city in relative peace and quiet. Day 3 2 or 3 ships arrived... glad I was on the way out!

The geography actually made the city, and helped it flourish for 800+years. Quite unfortunate how that changed, but overall I wouldnt say it sucked in the grand scheme of things.

And by the way, fun fact: the MOSE system is in function since last year, however EVERY time it rises (very common in fall and winter) it cost about 200k-300k euros to the province.

Awwww... uncertain days ahead for Venice , despite efforts made.
Venice is of course listed on UNESCO.
Such an ancient beauty.
Still loving your videos Reallifelolre! and of course - Mr Texan - Host

Surely you could combat rising sea levels by deepening the sea by either digging on the sea floor, or digging large tunnels and flooding them along the shorelines?

Being a Texas Tech alumnus who lived in Lubbock. The second you said about 200,000 people I immediately thought "oh, about the same size as Lubbock" and then you made the comparison right after me. 😂

Actually, the 260k population figure is quite misleading. It represents the population of the whole Venice metropolitan area, much of which is actually built on the mainland, with regular streets and cars (source: I live there). The population of the historic city is less than 60k people, ever decreasing because of insanely high rents and the difficulties of living in such a peculiar place. Even people who would like to continue living there are often forced to move on the mainland because they just cannot afford otherwise. So all the percentages quoted in the videos are 4x higher, which is even more impressive.

Why has Venice never thought to ask nicely (and maybe send over a few ducats) for the Netherlands to send over a boat full of Dutch engineers to arrive and solve the problems?

Overpriced projects (Stuttgart 21, BER airport) or UNESCO world heritage that is endangered/revoked (Dresden Elbe Valley) also exists in Germany. Our two countries have a lot in common.

I've actually been in Venice and I also rode one of the boats there and it was a fairly pleasant city.

I want to visit Venice just once so i can see a city with such a large historical impact before it is consumed by the sea probably within my lifetime

When you spawn on an island with a single tree

It seems to me that they value there buildings and the money that the tourists brings. They need to bight the bullet and either raise their buildings or bring in enough dirt and rock to bring the hight of the islands higher than the water level, losing the first floor of every building. Personally I would like to see a combination of both. If they could raise all buildings about 3 or 4 meters and fill in under it and set it down so it's well above the water level.
I'm not an engineer but I know this can be done. It just takes the willingness to do it.

as a young venetian student I can only hope a better future for my beautiful city! 🙂

Historically speaking it's actually a very well placed city. Protected by lagoons making it difficult to conquer, close to Italy, France, Germany, it was a natural passing point of middle europe for the trade with the east. It isn't without reason why Venice became the most powerful merchant republic.

Basically the Venetians had no choice as to where they located their city -it was to go to a safe place away from the invading barbarians - away from the Huns and particularly the Germanic Lombards who invaded most of northern Italy from across the Alps and as they didn't have a fleet the Venetians were safe in their sea world.The original Venice was on the mainland-Altinum I think it was called in Roman times.

Venicians must have absolutely loved the lockdown, where their city was finally quiet. I'd honestly loved to her a local talk about how much they enjoyed it.

The whole city is a work of art. I visited as a 9 year old boy in 2006, and have never forgotten the experience.

Venice: "You guys are 30% over budget and taking 80% longer than you promised! That's absolutely criminal!"
Boeing Aerospace: "Those are rookie numbers. Hold my beer..."

Not an engineer by any means, lol, but it seems to me it would make more ecological/commercial sense to put Venice in its own fishbowl by building a permanent sea wall around it and then artifically controling the water level (& filtering/exchanging the water) inside the fishbowl. Then let the rest of the lagoon deal with the sea changes naturaly and not obstruct commercial ship traffic.

I absolutely love Venice. It is a world treasure. Venice is taking steps to ease the crush of tourist crowds. They have banned large cruise ships from going there. That is a good step. Everything that can be done must to done to save the city from the rising water. I was there last for 10 days in 2018. The history of Venice is fascinating, and it must be preserved if possible.

Was in Venice one month ago. It’s a magnificent city of unmatched beauty. It’s a unique city in the world. Hope the Italians can find a way around the drowning problem and preserve this jewel of North Italy 🇮🇹 Greetings from Greece to all the Italians

Basically, during the Age of Discovery, the Mediterranean Sea dominance was up-ended by greater powers finding a way to circumventing the need to go through hostile civilisations and claim the lands that gave them their produces-spices, slaves, silk-.

My grandpa lived in Venice and used to walk across san Marco square to go to school. Then the family for various reasons moved to Lombardy (near Milan) but I can't immagine how good it was living in Venice in the 50's when there weren't that many tourists

There is an old Portuguese joke about Venice that goes like this :
A couple of portuguese hillbillies went to Venice for the first time on a honeymoon . When they came back , a friend asked them how was the trip , many of them asked a bit jealous , it must have been pretty romantic no? They immediately answered: It was awful, water everywhere, it was so flooded that people had to use boats to move around , there was so much water that we barely left the hotel …
It’s an old joke that with the climate change …Starts to lose its fun hahah.

One other thing which you didn´t address is that this lagoon is a perfect place when it rains to keep the rain water above and separated to the salt/dirt-water below that. This is highly used to preserve drink water there but dehydrating the ground under the buildings makes those even sink more...

New Orleans : "Finally a worthy opponent, our battle will be legendary"

Seems they've been learning from the Dutch, hope the tech helps them as much as it helped my western countrymen!

what prevents Venice from redirecting the rivers back into the lagoon, and filling up everything except the famous waterfronts and the internal canals?

Europe: *keeps old buildings*
People: “Wow so cool!”
South East Asia: *keeps old buildings*
People: “Old and poor”

I saw somewhere else that there is a ferry system in Venice which is the local equivalent of a bus line. Half of the ferries' seats are reserved for locals while the other half are for tourists. If they didn't do this, the actual residents of Venice would never be able to ride it.

If Venice was an inland city, I doubt it would have been this popular.
Edit: Besides, the city was built in the sea for defence. So the city would have been long sacked and stripped of its riches otherwise. In that sense, during its golden age, Venice's geography was perfect.

I have a small correction to make on the Venetians against the Ottomans. They did not decide to fight them alone, but after several requests for help, they were left alone to fight them. The Peninsula was very much fragmented and collectively ignored the danger from the east until it was too late. John Julius Norwich in his excellent A History of Venice explains this far better than I can.

You could imagine the stone structures atop cause the muddy land mass to gradually sink? If only it can anchor itself to other land mass or scanned where it is rocky underneath to build pillars that supported the whole brownstone structure?

For the record, I witnessed the first test MOSE gate module floating in the lagoon since 1989.

Odd considering, my family is from there for a few hundred years. History of Venice has a history of rarel ever invaded to its location. The water ways made it ideal for trading. The arsenal which could turn out a ship a day due to production chain and became very rich over its almost 1000 year republic. Worst placed city? Oh idk about that.

There are ways to visit Venice without staying at the island. Italy has great colective transport (specially at the north), and it can be used to go directly to the old city being in the surrounded areas. In my case I was hosted in Milan and I made a day trip to Venice using the high-speed train. You can see all the important places of the city on one day and also preserve the city beauty, wich can be disapointing due the huge amount of tourists. As tourists we can respect this city and preserve it.

In 1974 in Venice, I heard how dewatering the soils beneath the Lagoon, The city was sinking. Forty years on and nothing's changed.

My uncle is currently in Venice and he's working abroad there, I guess for a few months. My uncle works abroad in foreign countries for more than half a year. Sure, Venice is beautiful, but it may have a lot of problems.

"In the end, no amount of technology can possibly [save Venice]."
Duh, just put a bigass jack under the city and crank it up at the same rate than the lowering land!
Or eventually make Venice the first floating city on antigrav engines!

Excellent presentation! Historically, Venice shows what can be achieved by welcoming immigration and outside influences.

This whole "Cities your grandkids probably won't see" series is kinda depressing.

How about redirecting the Adriatic sea's flow to Venice, Redirect it either East or North west past Venice. Venice will dry up a bit having more space for tourists but at the same time saving it from sinking.

i would love to visit Venice, it looks gorgous!! I'm orignally from a city very close to Venice but my family moved and i never got to visit it yet

Venice's beginning came from early sailors towing logs out and driving them into the mud and building upon these footings.

My favorite series of RLL : explaining why each city's/country's geography sucks

As someone that lives in Venice, Im officially kinda sad hearing this.

@RealLifeLore
Very nice video; there is just one important misinformation which is that Venice itself counts less than 50 thousand people! The overall number of 260k includes cities on the mainland like Mestre and Marghera which are under Venice municipality!
The city on the water is drastically loosing citizens!

7:59 Correction: Vasco da Gama didn't discover the Cape of good hope. It was discovered long ago and a main obstacle for the Portuguese for some time. It was known as the Cape of torments. Eventually Bartolomeu Dias managed to cross it and it became the Cape of Good Hope, opening the way for Vasco da Gama who was the first european to reach India by boat.

Correction. The carthaginians produced mass assembly way before venice when constructing their ships. How we open a box today and parts are labeled as part G or H etc etc Carthage invented that process and Rome stole it and said it was their own idea.

The idea of a medieval civilization being able to build whole warships in a day is absolutely mind-boggling to me

Couldn’t you reroute the rivers back into the lagoon? Let the silt start building up? Or just fill it around the city island?

Venice is beautiful and different from other cities of Europe.
I really enjoyed it

Anyone who's ever worked with an Italian contractor will know that 8 years over deadline and twice the budget is more like standard procedure than mismanagement.

Should hire some Dutch

Shoutout to your inspired fan Australiaball Animates
Also you’re probably spending a ton of time making these videos and posting so much lately,
you deserve a long break when you want one bro. You have taught me so much lately yet so much of your time is editing videos. Thank you so much for the free education RLL!

Hey, Portuguese here. Minor correction regarding the portuguese discovery of the sea route to India. The first rounding of the Cape of Good Hope was in 1488 by the Portuguese explorer, Bartolomeu Dias. Vasco da Gama, in his voyage to India, rounded the cape in November 1497, and later reached India in May 1498. So, Vasco da Gama was the first to discover and navigate the sea route to India, but he wasn't the first to round the Cape of Good Hope.
PS: great video nonetheless

I m born in Venice, I have lived in Venice almost all my life. Most of the information in this video are simply completely wrong. I mean, not slightly. Completely wrong.

Move the buildings. Get them off of their current foundations and disperse them throughout the north Adriatic coast. Give Venice the rights to claim more of the land around themselves and physically relocate the museum pieces to higher ground.

On the contrary, Venice is in an ideal location, but it needs some serious help and forward thinking to make it all it can be for the modern world. How to do that? Easy. Transform the outer islands into a continuous unbroken causeway completely cutting off the waters around Venice from Adriatic. Raise this causeway high enough that the sea will never - at its worst- have a chance to over top it. This area should be wide enough for its own modern development with hotels, expensive seas-side villas, shopping, cruise terminals and anything that is an amenity to the tourist and financially secure home owner.
There would still be a pair of locks leading from the Adriatic to what would now be the Venice Lagoon. These would be traversed by obscenely expensive yachts and cruise liners docking at Venice proper. The Lagoon would become a protected habitat and because it would neither be all fresh water or all sea water it would develop a unique ecosystem. But, mostly importantly, the Lagoon would be 20 feet below sea level, raising Venice out of the damp.
I am sure once a project took off, many other great ideas would be tied to it. Venice would be a Queen's City.

Meanwhile, another European locality that has canals (and is below sea level), the Netherlands, experiences few flooding incidences.
Venice needs to give a call to the Dutch, just saying.

The whole "living museum" bit is the ENTIRE problem with Venice.
Contrary to how this guy makes it sound the Aqua Alta, the "High Water", isn't a new thing. It's been a feature of the Lagoon since forever, mostly in the winter. And while yes the Aqua Alta flooding hitting a meter or more high is getting more and more frequent (the historical norm is more like a foot/30-ish centimeters) it's still just a slight intensifying of something the city has been dealing with for longer than most of the very cultures you hail from have existed.
What's changed is that over the last 500-ish years the money to do what needs to be done hasn't always been there, and the last 200-ish years various governmental and super-governmental bodies have just added red tape in the name of "muh preservation efforts".
The first problem can rightly be blamed on the Portuguese, who are the absolute masters of altering the course of human history, usually to the catastrophic detriment of a sizable group of people, with 0 f*cks given. I mean... trans-Atlantic slave trade anyone? Oh wait, you thought that was British America, and was about cotton farming in the dirty south, and was proof that the USA is a horrible racist nation, and the worst place to ever exist? lol nah, the Portuguese bruh. Their colony, Brazil, was the first country use chattel slaves from Africa. The early sugar and later coffee trades were literally built on the backs of slave labour. 40-45% (depending on who's counting) of all slaves taken across the Atlantic from Africa were brought by Portuguese flagged ships (of course after being purchased from the real root-perpetrators of the African slave trade... [drumroll]... OTHER AFRICANS!!! What, did you think white people were like regularly staging raids on the African interior to round up slaves or something? Please, what do you take us for... Arabs/Muslims?), and Brazil was the last country in the western hemisphere to ban slavery. In 1888. 25 years after the emancipation proclamation.
The second problem is on you, and roughly 70-80% of all people living in developed nations around the world, who have actually managed to get themselves brainwashed into thinking that institutions and bureaucracy can accomplish things on purpose. They can't. Whenever they accomplish anything it is by accident, and most of the time they just cause even more even worse problems than they'll ever accidentally solve simply by existing. Individuals solve problems. Less power to systems and more power to individuals.

I can’t even believe you dropped a SpongeBob reference in an otherwise dense video about politics, geography, economics, ecology and environment.
Made the video that much better honestly.

I am a Venetian. The actual population of Venice city center has only actually 40 000 citizens, not 260 000. During the peak periods (in summer) there are around 200 000 /250 000 tourists per day in venice center. It means that for every 1 Venetian there are over than 5 tourists walking and crowding the streets😱😱

Okay, we've seen so many videos about cities that sinking. I can't wait for you to make a video about Jakarta because it is a complicated one.
Well, Vox already made one though, but I want to see it in your perspective.
Beware of the Indonesians that will rush to that video though, because that topic is kinda sensitive politically within society in the region.

"Thank You so much for watching", he says, when we're the ones getting quality history lessons for free

It is so easy to travel from venice everywhere. An hour to the airport from San Marco. An hour flight to any place in Europe 🥰

1 build a wall around venice 2 allow water through locks attached to the walls around venice that will allow the lagoon to act normality while protecting venice the locks along the 3 inlets were a waste of time

As a dutchman, I can confidently say that those guys are amateurs.

Hey, RLL! I really enjoy your videos and have been watching since like, 2017! I’m from a sort-of country neighboring Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Greetings from the Nationalist Authoritarian State of Palestine 🇵🇸

15:47 So, the sea will rise 6 to 11 meters? Somehow I doubt that. If that was the case, then almost every coastal city in the world would be in trouble and already flooding, not just Venice. I think the numbers in the prediction must be millimeters.