5 myths about Venice, Italy

Myth 1: Venice is overrun by tourists.

If you're a daytripper arriving by car or train at 9 a.m. on a Sunday in August, you'll be convinced--with some justification--that Venice is a veritable Pied Piper among tourist towns. Still, there are ways to avoid the crowds:

Travel out of season. Even the depths of winter are mild by the standards of New York or Chicago, and hotel rates are often half of what you'd pay in summer. The best time to come is from November to March, when most tourists have migrated south or to the ski slopes.

Visit during the week.Venice is just a few hours from Milan and Rome, making it an easy target for the weekend-getaway crowd.

Pick a quiet neighborhood. In high season, tourists on day excursions jam the routes from the Piazzale Roma to San Marco. You'll find fewer people when you get off the main pedestrian thoroughfares.

Myth 2: Venice is too expensive.

Too expensive compared to what? A double room in a three-star hotel costs no more--and possibly less--than comparable accommodations in Zürich, London, Chicago, or Boston. If you're on a tight budget, avoid hotels near the Piazza San Marco and investigate other possibilities such as convents or youth hostels. Meals needn't be costly, either. Pizzerias are easy to find, and stand-up bars offer sandwiches and other light fare. Best of all, you don't have to pay a euro to explore Venice on foot--and distances are so short that just about everything is within walking distance.

Myth 3: The canals are open sewers.

Nobody with a sensitive nose would confuse Venice's canali with mountain brooks, at least not during high summer. But that's to be expected in a city that was built on mudflats and sandbanks, and the scent is from algae and silt, not sewage. Industrial pollution is a problem in Venice, just as it is in most urban areas. Still, the Venetian lagoon remains one of the richest natural habitats for fish, birds, and plant life in the entire Mediterranean region, and both it and the major canals are cleansed twice a day by tides from the Adriatic Sea.

Myth 4: Venice is the new Atlantis.

True, Venice is sinking--but at a fairly modest rate. Capping of artesian wells in Venice and nearby mainland towns has slowed the subsidence to a quarter of an inch per year.

The main threat to Venice isn't an imminent "Slurp!" from the clay beneath the lagoon, but flooding from the acqua alta (see the link below) or high water that occurs when a scirocco storm forces the Adriatic's waters into the lagoon at high tide. When this happens, Venice city workers lay down elevated walkways and the natives haul out their galoshes. But don't worry--you're unlikely to drown in bed. And in any case, there's an ongoing project to raise pavements in low-lying areas of the city to minimize soggy sidewalks.

Myth 5: Beware of thieves on motorscooters.

This warning may be valid in Rome or Naples, but you'll encounter few thieving Vesparazzi in Venice. For one thing, wheeled vehicles (except handcarts and baby carriages) are illegal in most of the city. Still, if a tough-looking character charges toward your gondola on a JetSki, hang onto your purse or wallet. And watch out for pickpockets, who flock to Venice and other major tourist cities of Europe during high season.

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.)

Level of tide Percentage of Venice floodedUp to 80 cm Normal tide100 cm 4%110 cm 12%120 cm 35%130 cm 70%140 cm 90%

An extreme case:

On October 31, 2004, 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). More recently--on December 1, 2008--the acqua alta reached 156 cm and flooded most of the city.This was the most extreme acqua alta in 22 years. (The worst deluge in Venice's history was in 1966, when floodwaters topped out at 194 centimeters.)

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.