Deirdre McQuillan dives into Venice to see how it was built and how the unique city operates

Irish Times

4 days ago

The law of unintended consequences came to mind on a recent visit to Venice. I had gone to see the opening of the second season of Il Balletto di Venezia, the ballet company founded by Irish barrister Gerardine Connolly with her Venetian business partner Alessio Carbone, but what followed was completely unexpected. The experience made me discover what every Venetian knows, that the city is an upside down forest.
The event took place in the grand hall of the magnificent 16th century Scuola Grande renowned for its extensive collection of masterpieces by Tintoretto adorning the walls and ceilings which took 25 to complete.
It was an awesome location for the debut featuring twelve classically trained teenage dancers from various parts of the world. The company has been travelling to Sardinia, Moncalvo, Florence and Treviso this month, closing the season in Dublin in the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) tomorrow). (
After dinner and still wallowing in the memory of the performances which earned a standing ovation and roars of approval from the audience, friends walked me home to an apartment near the Accademia bridge where I was staying and I got to bed around midnight. At 2.30am , I woke up unable to breathe, just couldn't get my breath however I tried and knew I needed help.
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It forced me reluctantly to wake the English caretaker who, though she has lived in Venice for many years admitted she didn't have a doctor. She decided to ring the owner of the apartment, an American doctor currently living in the States who, having listened to my wheezing efforts on speakerphone, advised that an ambulance should be called.
Within minutes – - a water ambulance arrived at the little jetty nearby with three paramedics bringing various pieces of equipment. They gave me Ventolin, took my temperature, blood pressure and oxygen levels, filled in a report and seeing that my condition had improved, then left.
No charge. Such is how universal social health insurance works in Italy. The caretaker was duly impressed. And it made me curious about how the city functions on water and how it was built on water.
The next day, still a bit groggy, I took a vaporetto to the island of San Giorgio (location of one of the recent Jeff Bezos extravaganzas) to see an exhibition of Murano glass and visited the famous church and its campanile with views across the city. Listening to its ring of nine bells and walking around its lovely seashore was reviving.
The next day there was time to marvel at the famous Bellini Mother and Child masterpiece in the Friari Basilica, one of the most important monastic centres in the city before heading back to the airport. On the way out on the Alilaguna water taxi we passed the Ospedale where I saw several water ambulances like the one that had come to my assistance the night before. motoring out of the harbour.
I also noticed that scattered across the lagoon are the tips of upturned wooden stakes called bricola, testimony to the city's history and construction.
Following the collapse of the Roman empire, early settlers sought refuge on a lagoon with several small islands, muddy swamps with soft clay. They created one of the world's greatest feats of engineering from which grew the great city of Venice.
To create stable foundations, the Venetians harvested large timber poles between 3-11 ft from the forests of Croatia and Cadore in the Veneto, drove them down up to five metres into the ground until they hit a much harder layer of clay. They then cut off the tops and wooden planks were laid on top to spread the load and on top of that Istrian stone raised the foundations above the water. Buildings could now be erected.
Since wooden piles packed tightly together free of oxygen do not rot, almost all the original piles more than 1,000 years later are still holding up the city. Over centuries the wooden piles became hardened to a stone-like state and to this day remain intact.
There are 14,000 tightly packed wooden poles in the foundations of the Rialto bridge alone and around 10,000 oak trees under the San Marco Basilica built in 832 AD, so there are millions of poles supporting the city.
According to a local historian the hitters who hammered down the piles by hand were called battipali and to keep the rhythm going would sing ancient songs celebrating the city.
With over 5 million tourists annually, Venice is of course famous for sights such as St Mark's Square, the Doge's Palace. the Clock Tower and innumerable other great buildings and works of art; but as the bricoli attest, its marvels lie both above and below the ground. After this visit I can say that both literally and metaphorically it took my breath away.
Footnote: Il Balletto di Venezia stages two performances on tomorrow, July 30th, at 5pm and 8pm at the RIAM closing its second season. It will be the first time ballet has been staged in the Academy's new concert hall.