The Tide is High - St. Mark's Square Under Water

Ever heard of Acqua Alta? Well, the Venetian Lagoon has tides, too, and sometimes its tidal range is large enough to waterlog parts of the city. Acqua Alta, which literally translated means "high water" normally appears in Winter, especially at full moon or new moon.
But to a slighter extent it can also happen in fall or early spring. Coincidentally I happened to be around in one of those cases: On my third day in Venice most of St. Mark's Square was being flooded around noon. Time for some photos!

Others thought the same.

St. Mark's Square is one of the lowest situated parts of the city, so it always gets submerged first in case of flood. The water is not coming over directly from the see or overflowing canals though, instead it comes up from below, emerging from the gaps between stones.

Or from gully covers.

Nonetheless it's *relatively* clean, and at least in September it still is comforably warm. So tourists aren't really bothered, just take their shoes off and go splashing in the water.
But take care! The white spots with marble are quite slippery.

While it's huge fun for tourists, the Venetians themselves aren't very impressed. After all they're used to the yearly recurring floodings, that usually develop when there's low atmospheric pressure and wind is blowing from the south. Apart from that, the days of year with Acqua Alta became more and more frequent in the past years. Why? Well, for a start Venice sank a few centimeters in the sixties when they extracted too much groundwater, and now we have climate change which apparently contributes to even stronger fluctuations.

At least when higher tides in winter are covering many of the alleys and water tries to seep in through the doors, it just gets a hassle. Blockades in front of them try to prevent damage, meanwhile tourists can get boots everywhere.

When it's not that bad, at least the shopkeepers at St. Mark's Square have to protect themselves from water - or they already adjusted their interior and just let it flow inside. Will disappear again, after all.

And it cleans the floor for free. But is the water really as clean as it looks like from above? Let's take a dive and have look...

Well... okay. At least it's not like the horrible sludge when Dresden is flooded.

Apart from normal Venetians there are some other locals that aren't exacly pleased by Acqua Alta: The pidgeons. Normally they're scattered all over the square, but if it gets wet they have no space to sit down anymore. Well, at least considerably less. They flock at the few higher located spots or... just take place on top of the people.

You just have to stand there with your arms spread out and they come flying.

Meanwhile the others are hanging around on the lanterns. As always, basically.

And what are their humanoid colleagues doing in the meantime? The ones who don't want to get wet?

Sometimes you have those spots where water is a bit more shallow. For the rest there are special walkways consisting of smaller units, which are stacked up in certain locations during the year's winter half, waiting to be set up in time of need.

Some more units, waiting for their job at higher tides.

If you want to know what the rest of Venice looks like when the water level is higher, there's a photo gallery over at the Telegraph. Quite impressive. In my case they could even leave the restaurant seats outside... and I had nice blue skies.