venice

We spent a weekend in Venice1 a short while ago, and one of the things that caught my attention was the wells in the city’s squares. Is there fresh water underneath that brackish swamp water? Well, no. The water from the wells in Venice is rainwater, collected by an ingenious hydraulic collection system that leveraged the square and surrounding buildings. I learned this and other intriguing tidbits by watching The Crazy Engineering of Venice on YouTube....