Venice, lift St. Mark's Square to save it? Bruno Zanardi: "Difficult work."

Last spring, Finestre sull’Arte published an interview by English writer Alasdair Palmer with restorer Bruno Zanardi: the subject was the absurd affair of the Tiepolo frescoes in Palazzo Labia, the headquarters of Rai in Venice, which, according to what we learned, no one has been able to see since 2008 because the Salone where the Tiepolo works are located has been closed ever since. And not at the behest of the property, that is, Rai, but because of a decision by the superintendence, which in 2008 decided to have the Salone closed for restoration. Sixteen years have passed, yet the hall is still closed to visits. After that, Zanardi spoke about the high water flooding the city and the Mose, which, in his opinion, does not solve the problem. Finally about the glass protections they put along St. Mark’s Basilica, Zanardi expressed doubts about who cleans and controls all that glass.

With the last high water, the Mose did not go into operation because the 1.10 meters of tide beyond which the bulkheads rise was not reached, so thehigh water invaded St. Mark’s basin and the square flooded because apparently no one closed the bulkhead openings, and as a result the Basilica’s narthex went underwater for the umpteenth time. “So much so that the Basilica’s Procuratorate, in order to be on the safe side,” Zanardi tells Finestre sull’Arte, “decided to keep the six gates of the glass protections closed and to put the wooden walkways back in place that Venetians and tourists have always used when there is high water.”

Now, however, it seems there is a desire to radically solve the problem, with works through which, at a cost of 47.5 million euros, the entire St. Mark’s Basin will be raised. The one between the canals of the Lido, Giudecca and the Grand Canal on which face, among others, St. Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace, the Marciana Library and the Riva degli Schiavoni with the Prison Palace. That’s not counting ordinary residential houses. “This,” Zanardi comments, “is the typical affair whose announcement is simple to make, while much less simple is to carry out without doing damage the work necessary to raise all those monumental buildings that are huge, fragile and very precious. Moreover, built not on land, but on stilts that have been submerged in water for countless centuries. In short, this is how the protection and preservation of artistic heritage in Italy turns.”

Image: Piazza San Marco. Photo: Massimo Adami

Venice, lift St. Mark's Square to save it? Bruno Zanardi: "Difficult work."

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