{"id":1668,"date":"2020-06-06T09:28:09","date_gmt":"2020-06-06T07:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/?p=1668"},"modified":"2020-06-06T09:28:09","modified_gmt":"2020-06-06T07:28:09","slug":"venetian-wells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/venetian-wells\/","title":{"rendered":"VENETIAN WELLS"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Venice, if we look at the centre of every campo, courtyard or cloister, we will probably see an ornamental well-head (vera da pozzo)<\/p>\n

Mostly carved out of marble or Istrian stone, well-heads cover a shaft leading to an underground cistern where rainwater was once collected and filtered<\/p>\n

In 1858, there were over 6500 well-heads in the city<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For centuries, Venetian wells<\/a>\u00a0were the only means of ensuring fresh water<\/p>\n

Venice\u2019s underground does not have easy-to-reach water tables, and rainwater was the only local source of drinking water<\/p>\n

In times of exceptionally long droughts, the Venetians brought over fresh water in ships from mainland rivers and springs<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The wells, no longer in use, had remained the city\u2019s only source of fresh water until June 23rd 1884<\/p>\n

when Venice\u2019s first aqueduct opened, conveying fresh water from the mainland<\/p>\n

To mark this event, a\u00a0fountain jetting water into the air as high as 22 metres was built in the middle of Piazza San Marco!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The well-heads became a work of art in its own right<\/p>\n

Until quite recently, in the centre of what is now the reading room of the Marciana Library, there was the monumental well designed by Jacopo Sansovino<\/p>\n

This place was once the courtyard of the Zecca<\/a>, the mint of the Republic of Venice<\/p>\n

When, in 1904, the Zecca was transferred, the courtyard was covered and transformed into a reading room<\/p>\n

The removed well-head was subsequently (1914) placed in the courtyard of Ca’ Pesaro, which now houses both the International Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of Oriental Art<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A rich series of wells, some of which are very ancient, can be admired in the Archaeological Museum and the Natural History Museum of Venice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Venice, if we look at the centre of every campo, courtyard or cloister, we will probably see an ornamental well-head (vera da pozzo) Mostly carved out of marble or Istrian stone, well-heads cover a shaft leading to an underground cistern where rainwater was once collected and filtered In 1858, there were over 6500 well-heads…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,93,98,107],"tags":[176],"class_list":["post-1668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-culture","category-tourist-information","category-venice","tag-well-head"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1669,"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1668\/revisions\/1669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.casadelmiele.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}