What does Venice look like when observed from the perspective of climate change, environmental collapse, and human-animal relations in an age of industrialization and mass extinction? That is, as a privileged observatory of the Anthropocene?

This guide, composed of several voices, forms a new, illuminating and disturbing mosaic of Venice and its Lagoon. What does the Venetian School of Painting tell us about our relationship with the environment and animals? What do peripheral places in the Lagoon like Porto Marghera and Pellestrina reveal about the advent and impact of modernity? What stories of extinction lie behind local delicacies like baccalà mantecato? What does the centuries-old relationship of Venetians with water tell us about other cities threatened by an increasingly hostile climate?

The guidebook, accompanied by a map, is intended as a tool for learning about the city in a new way. Venice emerges here as a unique ecosystem at risk, but also as a key to understanding our increasingly vulnerable world.

Preface by Serenella Iovino

INTRODUCTION (by Lucio De Capitani); I. WATERSCAPES (texts by Francesco Luzzini, Paul R. Merchant, Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Heiner Krellig, Hannah Strothmann, Carmen Concilio, Elena Longhin, Cristina Baldacci); II. ARCHITECTURE (texts by Jonathan Skinner and Andrea Vianello, Emiliano Guaraldo, Heiner Krellig, Marita Liebermann, Rebecca Snedeker, Giulia Repetti, Joanne Cheung); III. FOODWAYS (texts by L. Sasha Gora, Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, Camilla Bertolini, Eleonora Sovrani and Jane da Mosto, Francesco Vallerani); IV. ECOLIBERATION (texts by Petra Codato, Margherita Tess, Joseph Campana, Sara Lando, Daniel A. Finch-Race, Marianna Tsionki); V. MIGRATIONS (texts by Beppe Caccia and Barbara Del Mercato, Olga Smith, Shaul Bassi); VI. IMMERSION (texts by Pietro Consolandi, Gina Caison and Léa Perraudin, Giacomo-Maria Salerno, Felicity Mangan, Katherine Ball); VII. AIRSCAPES (texts by Fine Brendtner and Denise Frazier, Robert-Jan Wille, Stefano Liberti, Jennifer Scappettone).

The book was created with the co-financing of the European Union - FSE REACT-EU, PON Research and Innovation 2014-2020