Adriatic Blue

Continuously inhabited for some 1500 years, its people of unknown or as yet undecided origins

, Venice is living mystery at its finest. Modern anthropologists have surmised that the city was initially populated by Lombards and Paduans fleeing invasion from Germanic tribes during the decline of the Roman Empire. Most Italian historians conflate the official founding of the city with that of its first church, San Jacopo on the small islet of Rialto.

The allure is compounded by tales of its imminent submersion in the Adriatic. The idea that the Floating City will one day float no longer is, in itself, enough to have avid fans of literature, art, architecture and western history from the world over flocking to hotels in Venice in droves to take it all in, and in good time. Wooden piles, petrified after hundreds of years of filtering the mineral rich waters of the Adriatic sea, underpin the brick and mortar of the cities greatest structures: St. Marks, La Guidecca and the world famous Venice hotels lining the streets of the Lido.

For all the mystery though, there are more sinister forces at work in the city. An aging population and low birth-rate suggest that life in the City of Water may be drowning, in a symbolic if not a literal sense. While it reached a peak in the 16th century at some half a million inhabitants, around the time Shakespeare wrote his famed Merchant of Venice, the city has been in more or less steady decline ever since. Most recent statistics place the population of the Venetian historic quarter at less than sixty thousand, less than half of what it was as recently as 1965. It remains to be seen then, whether Venice can continue to float atop the Adriatic blue, and whether there will be anyone left to see it sink.

by: Peter Merifield

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