venice and its surroundings 39
opened a breach in the coastal defense; in the immediate aftermath, it
was necessary to close the breach, while later it would be rebuilt, restored,
and consolidated. Embankments of earth were raised, over time estab-
lishing buffer zones. Directly in front of this, the Venetians built another
embankment out of stone that could withstand the assault of the waves.
In a continuous sort of dance, ships brought loads of stone blocks from
the Dalmatian coast to be used in this defense. Elsewhere, doubled or
even tripled rows of stone were used to stabilize the shoreline. In the sec-
ond half of the century, adjudications reveal how the construction of this
defensive layer was commissioned to contractors and a skilled workforce
at an ongoing cost. The public authority conducted a project of coastal
defense that was both consistent and expensive. Certain figures testify to
this point. In 1424, 6000 ducats were spent each year on the coasts;37 in
1469, more than 11,000; in 1490, 10,800 ducats.38 In 1496, the same sum was
spent, though the work never seemed to be complete.39 On this front,
this represents a very long history because the murazzi [embankments],
built at a great expense before the disappearance of the sovereign state
of Venice, secured the beaches that the stony embankments of the 15th
century protected—a history in which we have to underline the role of
the construction yards of the 15th century.40
Venice’s hydrographic problem has been present since its origin and is
central in the history of relations between Venice and the terraferma cit-
ies. But, faced with river siltation, unable to intervene in the rivers’ course
further upstream, Venice had for a long time a single solution: contain-
ing dykes. After various studies and periodic development, a first defense
project was developed in 1324. It would divert the water of the Brenta
far from the Rialto Basin, hereafter isolated and protected, or so it was
hoped, by a system of dikes.41 The aim was to deter freshwater flows and
the risks that they posed in silting the central basin, especially the port.
The conquest of the terraferma then allowed Venetian engineers to design
more radical diversionary operations. In the second half of the 15th cen-
tury, the question of altering the course of the Brenta was therefore at the
heart of the debate: its mud continually threatened Venice, near the tip
37 Archivio di Stato di Venezia (A.S.V.), Provveditori al Sal, B. 6, fol. 56r.
38 R. Commissione per la pubblicazione dei Documenti finanziari della Repubblica di
Venezia, serie seconda, Bilanci Generali, ed. F. Besta, 3 vols (Venice, 1903–1912), vol. 1, bk. 1,
pp. 148, 163.
39 A.S.V, Provveditori al Sal, B. 6 (reg. 8), fols 88v–89r.
40 Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Villes vivantes. Italie. XIIIe–XVe siècle (Paris, 2009),
pp. 85–100.
41 Crouzet-Pavan, Sopra le acque salse, 1:358–59.