The stunning news came in mid-February that Italy’s gigantic Mose project—building underwater barriers to save Venice from catastrophic flooding—might be doomed to fail. This bombshell fell after decades of planning, construction starting in 2003, 5.5 billion euros of investment, and, with greed playing a front-page role, the criminal prosecutions for corruption of numerous political figures. As revealed in the February 6, 2017 issue of the Italian periodical Espresso, a forthcoming report from Gian Mario Paolucci, a former Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Padua, targets among other defects the fact that while the hinges submitted to initial tests were of high quality, manufactured in Vicenza, the hinges actually to be installed are manufactured in Eastern Europe and of possibly fatally inferior quality.
A threatened disaster to Venice may seem far off to citizens elsewhere who complain that real estate prices are exploding, small shops are disappearing, and the young and poor are being forced out while tourists overwhelm their central streets. It may seem irrelevant to London, where skyscrapers multiply and get taller, or to Paris, where developers of skyscrapers push to introduce them.
In If Venice Dies, Salvatore Settis contends that the ills that citizens of other historic cities complain about are in fact the same as the perils that threaten Venice. In this brilliant polemic, Settis argues that the old ethical restraints have crumbled everywhere. Thus, the enemies of historic cities are universally the same: greed and ignorance of history. Today, Venice
