Venetian Lagoon

Let It Snow In Europe, the winter of 1363-64 was particularly harsh.

Not just in the north, but also in the southern countries like Italy, where the Venetian lagoon froze solid, as did the estuary of the river Rhône.

Snow fell over the town of Phocis in Belgium and stayed for 100 days.

Without any thermometers, as they weren't used until the 17th century, writers could only explain how harsh the winters were by describing the life-threatening cold, the deep snowfalls and the persistent frosts, and by showing the damage that the extreme weather caused to livestock, crops and society in general.

It's a UN program, uh, that is, uh, supports the habitat restoration of marine mammals, specifically whales as well, uh, in the North Atlantic.

Uh, we also have the Venice Lagoon program as well that restores, uh, the, the lagoon in, in the area.

Uh, so for us, regeneration goes beyond reducing harm, uh, but it also goes into, uh, giving back to the ocean that ultimately the industry relies on.

Yeah.

The side effects were so agonizing that historical records show prisoners actively trying to provoke the guards into executing them just to end the pain.

Or consider Poveglia Island in the Venetian Lagoon of Italy.

It has a deeply layered history of misery.

In the 1700s, it was used as a lazaretto, a dumping ground and quarantine station for victims of the bubonic plague.

We're almost there.

FS-2018 nodded mournfully, staring out at the waters of the Laguna Veneta, remembering sailing here once with Bertrand, a peaceful image that dissolved now into a horrific memory from a week before.

I was there when he jumped off that badia tower.

Mine were the last eyes he ever saw.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, so I was on this dig, actually, and it was in the Venetian Lagoon.

I went to military school to continue studies, and I did forensic archaeology and anthropology.

So I was lucky enough to get to this dig.

because the lagoon is sheltered by the barrier islands and the ancient infrastructure that the city behind you has been building and maintaining for over a thousand years.

You are in the Venetian Lagoon, one of the most visited, most photographed, most culturally significant bodies of water on Earth.

A shallow saltwater basin on the northeastern coast of Italy that has served as the foundation, literally and figuratively, for one of the great civilizations of the Mediterranean world.

The city of Venice is behind you.

Some of them appear to be collapsing, roof sections missing, walls leaning at angles that are clearly not structural, vegetation growing from windows and eaves and the cracks between stones, the slow botanical colonisation that follows the departure of human maintenance from any structure in a climate with sufficient moisture.

This is Poveglia and it has been closed to the public for decades.

Poveglia is a small island in the southern Venetian lagoon, roughly halfway between the historic centre of Venice and the Lido.

It is one of dozens of small islands scattered across the lagoon, many of which have served various functions over the centuries – military installations, monasteries, hospitals, quarantine stations, gardens – and which have been variously occupied, abandoned, reoccupied, and abandoned again as the needs of the Venetian state shifted and evolved.

It's kind of related to Garganega, you know, the Suave grape.

Anyway, there's this really flashed restaurant and kind of guest house on a little island in the Venetian Lagoon.

It does sound pretty bougie, babe.

Oh, I didn't say that.