Ancient Wooden Piles Reveal How Venice Was Built on Water

I'm joining a team of underwater archaeologists and restorers who are repairing a section of canal wall. The visibility is not currently fantastic. It's [snorts] uh incredibly disorientating. The team has timed my dive at the turning of the tide. As the water starts to rush out of the lagoon, it takes some of the silt with it. We're starting to get a little bit of clarity now down here, which is really exciting. So, I'm pressed up just against the canal wall, the deep stone foundations under the building. As the water clears, it reveals the invisible foundations of the

Venetians' amphibious city. What we're looking at here is this experimental section of tree trunk. These ones here are in fantastic condition. It's hard to believe this is wood from that is hundreds of years old. The early Venetians took massive wooden trunks between 1 and 1/2 to 3 m long, and they pounded them into the mud along the boundary of the area they wanted to build on. Now, that secured the mud and gave them the beginnings of a strong foundation. But obviously, normally, wood would not survive. And yet, here's the miracle.

Thanks to the anaerobic conditions deep in the mud, where there's no oxygen, these tree trunks don't rot. The exterior walls of Venice's streets and palazzos are supported by thousands of tightly packed wooden piles thrust into the mud of the lagoon to shore up the city's precious land. It's an ingenious piece of engineering that's kept the city afloat for hundreds of years. Paolo Zanetti and his team are tasked with ensuring it lasts into future centuries. Now, the 30,000 boats rushing around Venice every day are exposing the piles, the wash, and the underwater waves from propellers are destroying the canal walls.

We will need to go back to rowed boats, and everything would be fine.