venice and its surroundings 41
Corner deplored the silting of the coastal channel and the progression
of the marshes and of the dead lagoon. The councils and magistrates
describe the same dangers.
Thus the port: the grau nearest Venice, San Nicolò, had always pro-
vided unwelcoming natural conditions. Starting in the 14th century, vari-
ous works were carried out to try to improve the situation of the channel.45
But in the second half of the 15th century, these works would become
continuous. By restricting the width of the Malamocco inlet through the
sinking of rafts and timber crates, the experts hoped to reinvigorate the
movement of water in the San Nicolò inlet. Nothing worked, however.
Therefore, the usual palliatives, such as the loading and unloading of
barges, no longer sufficed, and for ships of large size, traffic tended to be
diverted to the Malamocco inlet. Additionally, siltation continued to prog-
ress and healthy lagoons diminished, becoming stagnant as tidal flows
no longer reached them. The engineer Piero Sambo in 1505 attempted to
measure the increase of the phenomenon in the time since the works that
his father had previously directed.46 Where they had found four feet of
water, now only three remained. Where salt water had previously been
three, four, five, or even six feet deep, meadows, fields, and pastures now
stretched.47 But the phenomenon posed an equal threat to the urban
canal system. There was a water shortage. The silt-filled canals produced
fetid air and miasma. This pollution threatened the city. Text after text
describes the danger. Marshes and reeds besieged the city. They gnawed
at the lagoon, and even in the city, grass grew in the rii [canals]. Sen-
ate proceedings show that, along with the canals, the preservation of the
city itself was threatened. The work of dredging out the canals was con-
ducted at regular intervals.48 Most operations were still done by hand,
by shovel once the waterway had been sectioned off and dried out. But,
on the Grand Canal, machines were used, for which the records indicate
requests for the first patents. An observation justifies all these works: “In
the past, a break of thirty years or more could be observed between each
45 Crouzet-Pavan, Sopra le acque salse, 1:355–57.
46 It is about the labors on the course of the Brenta from Lizzafusina to the canal of
Corbola.
47 Antichi scrittori d’idraulica veneta, vol. 3: La difesa idraulica della laguna veneta nel
secolo XVI. Relazioni dei periti, ed. R. Cessi and N. Spada (Venice, 1952), pp. 5–8; S. Ciriacono,
“Scrittori d’idraulica e politica delle acque,” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 3 (1980): Dal
Primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 2, pp. 491–512.
48 Crouzet-Pavan, Sopra le acque salse, 1:319–33.