Acqua Alta

High Tides and Flooding in Venice

ABOVE: Tourists wade in the Piazza San Marco. INSET BELOW: An intrepid visitor tests the waters.

Acqua alta, or "high water," can make Venice feel like Atlantis. At its worst, in 1966, acqua alta flooded the city with more than a meter of salty lagoon water; more typically, visitors notice water splashing over canal banks or bubbling up through drains in the Piazza San Marco.

The phenomenon is often mistaken for proof that Venice is sinking. Although the city did sink about 10 cm in the 20th Century because of industrial groundwater extraction, the sinking largely stopped when artesian wells on the mainland were capped in the 1960s. Today, subsidence is estimated at 0.5 to 1 mm per year, mostly due to geological factors and compression of the land beneath the city's millions of wooden pilings. A larger problem is the rising sea level, which will become an even bigger threat as global warming melts the arctic ice caps. Already, the frequency of acqua alta has increased from fewer than 10 times a year to more than 60 times a year in the last century.

Why (and when) acqua alta floods the city:

Acqua alta occurs when certain events coincide:

• A very high tide (usually during a full or new moon).

• Low atmospheric pressure.

• A scirocco wind blowing up the narrow, shallow Adriatic Sea, which forces water into the Venetian Lagoon.

The phenomenon is most likely to take place between late September and April, and especially in the months of October, November, and December. By official definition, acqua alta occurs when the tide is 90 mm (3.54 inches) above normal high tide.

Not all parts of the city are equally susceptible to flooding, as the following chart from the Comune of Venice indicates. Also, the actual depth of water in the streets is far less than the "level of tide" might suggest. (See the "extreme case" below, where 135 cm of flooding translated into 40 cm of water in the Piazza San Marco.)

An extreme case:

On October 31, 2004, when some of the photos in this article were taken, the acqua alta reached 135 cm, and 80% of the city was flooded. The Piazza San Marco was indundated by at least 40 cm or 16 inches of water in what was billed as the worst acqua alta of the last 10 years (and the 10th worst since the record flood of 1966).

Possible solutions:

The Comune of Venice and various international organizations have been working on solutions that range from floodgates at the Lagoon's entrances to raising of pavements in low-lying areas of the city. Much construction of the latter has already taken place, but it remains to be seen whether acqua alta can be tamed without closing off the Lagoon from the sea and turning it into a freshwater lake.

Next page: What to expect, how to prepare

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