Venice is currently sinking at a rate of roughly two millimeters per year while simultaneously being subjected to rising sea levels, meaning the romantic canals are slowly consuming the ancient architecture.

A closer look

Venice is currently sinking at a rate of roughly two millimeters per year while simultaneously being subjected to rising sea levels, meaning the romantic canals are slowly consuming the ancient architecture. The city was originally built on a foundation of wooden logs driven into the mud, which remarkably never rotted because the oxygen-poor water prevented bacteria from eating the expensive timber. However, decades of pumping groundwater for local industries caused the entire city to compress and drop, forcing millions of tourists to wade through knee-deep polluted water during the annual floods. There is a profound irony in paying exorbitant amounts of money for a gondola ride through a city that is actively losing to the ocean