How does the sewage system work in Venice?

1. it never gets clogged, I know
2. There is no sewer system in Venice. Its famous channels perform this function. Small canals carry all the waste into the Grand Canal and from there into the Adriatic Sea. Venice is so well built that all waste and sewage water with the ebb and flow of the tides (and this happens 2 times a day) is carried into the lagoon, and there is always clean water in the canals... The mechanism of flushing the canals with ebbs and flows works akin to air ventilation in the lungs and gas exchange - carbon dioxide for oxygen. By now, the Venetian lagoon has finally formed as a vast water area 56.5 km long and 9.6 km wide, separated from the Adriatic Sea by a sand spit with three straits: Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia. During high tides, sea water enters the lagoon through them, raising its level, and at low tides they go out to sea again. These daily currents clean the Venetian canals, allowing the city to do without a sewer treatment system.

   Here, of course, not everything is as simple as on the mainland. They say that the sewage system has recently been modernized, which the Venetians are terribly proud of, and a tidy sum has been spent on it. Another source notes, however, that there is no possibility of installing a central sewer system. Everything is complicated there, both with the foundations of houses and with the bottom topography. But they definitely did something. One of the Russian-speaking “new Venetians” assures that the system works and all wastewater is discharged into the lagoon.
   But some houses do not have such a sewer system, so a special sewerage boat moves around the city to service them.

   There are also different versions about the “smell” that haunts unaccustomed tourists. Firstly, sea water evaporates rapidly in sunny weather, and especially at low tide the smell of sea grass and iodine is strong, mixed with the “aroma” of mussels living there in the canals.
   Plus, in the distant alleys you can feel the painfully familiar smell of Moscow and St. Petersburg entrances. What can you do, people are the same everywhere, they save money on paid toilets...

   Regarding public toilets. Of course, they exist, but not much. Moreover, prices vary depending on the season. During hot periods, using a public toilet in Venice will cost 3 euros per day. For those who book this service online, the price is reduced to 2 euros.

   It costs twice as much to use a public toilet during Carnival compared to normal times, when tourists only pay €1.50. For indigenous residents, lower rates are provided: 0.25 cents if they have a “WC card-subscription” l9; worth 3 euros. Those over 60 years old enter for free, as they are issued a “WC card-subscription”.

3. Everything is carried away to us by the wave...

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In the section on the question How does the sewage system work in Venice? given by the author Natalya from Tver NF-90 the best answer is There is no sewer system in Venice. Its famous channels perform this function. Small canals carry all the waste into the Grand Canal and from there into the Adriatic Sea. Venice is so well built that all waste and sewage water with the ebb and flow of the tides (and this happens 2 times a day) is carried into the lagoon, and there is always clean water in the canals... The mechanism of flushing the canals with ebbs and flows works akin to air ventilation in the lungs and gas exchange - carbon dioxide for oxygen. By now, the Venetian lagoon has finally formed as a vast water area 56.5 km long and 9.6 km wide, separated from the Adriatic Sea by a sand spit with three straits: Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia. During high tides, sea water enters the lagoon through them, raising its level, and at low tides they go out to sea again. These daily currents clean the Venetian canals, allowing the city to do without a sewer treatment system.
Here, of course, not everything is as simple as on the mainland. They say that the sewage system has recently been modernized, which the Venetians are terribly proud of, and a tidy sum has been spent on it. Another source notes, however, that there is no possibility of installing a central sewer system. Everything is complicated there, both with the foundations of houses and with the bottom topography. But they definitely did something. One of the Russian-speaking “new Venetians” assures that the system works and all wastewater is discharged into the lagoon.
But some houses do not have such a sewer system, so a special sewerage boat moves around the city to service them.
There are also different versions about the “smell” that haunts unaccustomed tourists. Firstly, sea water evaporates rapidly in sunny weather, and especially at low tide the smell of sea grass and iodine is strong, mixed with the “aroma” of mussels living there in the canals.
Plus, in the distant alleys you can feel the painfully familiar smell of Moscow and St. Petersburg entrances. What can you do, people are the same everywhere, they save money on paid toilets...
Regarding public toilets. Of course, they exist, but not much. Moreover, prices vary depending on the season. During hot periods, using a public toilet in Venice will cost 3 euros per day. For those who book this service online, the price is reduced to 2 euros.
It costs twice as much to use a public toilet during Carnival compared to normal times, when tourists only pay €1.50. For indigenous residents, lower rates are provided: 0.25 cents if they have a “WC card-subscription” l9; worth 3 euros. Those over 60 years old enter for free, as they are issued a “WC card-subscription”.

This post contains everything you wanted, but were afraid to find out about sewerage in beautiful Venice :) Why is St. Mark's Square flooded in the title photo? Yes, because high water and the drainage system in the sinking beauty are directly connected.

Where do you think the contents of antique Venetian chamber pots go? Don’t you think so? :) That’s right - I also didn’t ask myself this question until September 26 of this year.

However, on this fateful day, the entry “And yet she is sinking” (about sinking Venice, if anyone is interested) appeared in my journal. The post unexpectedly received a lot of comments. Among them was this: “Does the author of the post know that in Venice, like many centuries ago, there is still no sewage system at all, and its role is played by canals and sea currents, and all, excuse me, the waste of the Venetians is joyfully carried away into the Adriatic Sea during the ebb and flow of the tides, which completely suits the cheerful Venetians. Against this background, the tenderness at the sight of children frolicking in this very water is, to put it mildly, incomprehensible."

With great aplomb, I answered that the author knew everything... but I did this only after I had scoured the entire Internet in search of a worthy refutation. That is, how is it possible, there is no sewerage system, I thought, - after all, I have seen repair work in the canals more than once (they are closed for this time, the water is completely drained, and they are tinkering there without hindrance). There are many pipes laid at the bottom of the canals - one of them must be a sewer pipe - I had almost no doubt about this.

Imagine my surprise when, from the mass of information about plans to improve the sewer system, new knowledge crystallized - Venice really uses the same method as 500 years ago. The method, by the way, is quite effective: all Venetian palazzos have so-called septic tanks - in other words, settling tanks, at the bottom of which accumulates... uh... well, in general, a natural product :) And everything that is lighter than this waste actually ends up in the canal through holes in the wall (by the way, in Venice, vacuum cleaner boats work very effectively:).

Twice a day the tide ebbs and flows in the Venetian Lagoon, so all the water in the canals is constantly cleared, or rather replaced by new clean water. Therefore, stories about the terrible smell of Venice are greatly exaggerated. However, some amber is actually felt during strong low tides, which occur mainly at night. Then these sewer holes turn out to be above the water level and, accordingly, a smell appears, which in the literature has a veiled name ""eau du canal".

By the way, I laughed very hard when, in my research, I came across the blog of an Italian guy who “came in large numbers” to Venice (apparently, a student). Soon after moving, he also had a question: is there even a sewer system in Venice? He just formulated it with youthful spontaneity: “Does all of Venice really constantly poop in the canal?” :) The guy decided to check this empirically: he pulled the cistern cord, rushed headlong to the window and saw that water had flowed out of the hole in the wall, but not Moreover:) The guy cheered up a little when he didn’t see any solid residues floating into the canal, but the experiment didn’t end there. Next, he poured dishwashing detergent into the toilet, drained the water and again ran to the window - foam flowed from the sewer hole exposed by the tide! Oh horror - the connection turned out to be direct and immediate!

As a very impressionable person, I immediately shared the terrible discovery with my husband, which caused him to have a fit of great joy. Well, come on, he laughed, but how do you think the sewage system in big cities works? Well, imagine - there are pipes, they lead to the same settling tanks, but somewhat larger and somewhat more advanced, and then the water (purified, but not sterile) is still discharged into rivers, seas and other places from which we drink and in which we swim. And indeed, I remembered my recent walk not far from the discharge of such water into our mountain stream - the smell of detergents is still very noticeable!

At first I was upset, and then I remembered Vladimir Voinovich and his Ivan Chonkin :)

By the way, all this only applies to the historical center of Venice; newer peripheral areas are connected to the city sewerage system. The islands seem to be connected too.

As illustrations, I took photographs of winter, autumn and spring floods in a completely random order. The post was written specifically in connection with floods, so I don’t have any other pictures :)

3.

9.

So everything is fine, gentlemen tourists! And floods are, perhaps, even a blessing, because they clean beautiful Venice better than any sewer truck. I read an interview with one of the former Venetian mayors about the protective structures being built. So the mayor there expressed a timid fear that these structures, by stopping water exchange in the canals, would cause another problem - stagnation of water and, accordingly, its pollution. Eh, eternal dualism :)

The moral of this fragrant fable is simple: I still love Venice, I will go there as often as before. But! I will splash around in high water on San Marco exclusively in high rubber boots - out of harm's way :)

How does Venice live without sewerage?

To some this will seem funny, to others absurd, but in a city that spent a lot of money on organizing sewerage, there is still no sewerage!

A reasonable question arises: where does everything go that, contrary to human will, according to the laws established by nature, is daily formed in the bodies of Venetians and guests of this unique city?

The answer is quite unexpected. It all “disappears” into the channels. The canals carry water and waste into the Grand Canal, and it then flows, along with all its “goods,” into... Where do you think? You'll never guess - to the Adriatic Sea! The city is built in such a way that all wastewater is carried into the lagoon with the ebb and flow of the tides. Thanks to this, there is always clean water in the canals. The mechanism for flushing the canals is based on the type of gas exchange (oxygen / carbon dioxide) in the human lungs.

The Venice Lagoon is 56.5 kilometers long and 9.6 kilometers wide. The lagoon is separated from the Adriatic Sea by a sand spit with three straits - Malomocco, Lido, Chioggia. These three currents clean all city canals. And thus, Venice, glorified by artists and composers and attracting ardent lovers, does without a central sewer system, which is available in all progressive parts of the planet. Despite the lack of sewerage, there are toilets in Venice. Prices for visiting them vary depending on the season.

This is only a small part of the information that Russian travelers, returning as part of an excursion group from Venice on a tourist bus, gleaned from their laptops and smartphones. And what pushed everyone to this session of self-education was a not very pleasant incident that happened to one tourist, Veronica Stepygina, while sailing in a gondola along the canal.

Since she was not used to moving in such means, at some point, as a result of an awkward turn of her body, she dropped her purse, which contained a certain amount of pocket money and a credit card, into the water. The gondolier wanted to help the victim out and was already reaching out with his oar to get the loss out of the water, but she, having heard a lot of various technical details about these canals even earlier, flatly refused - she fell into hysterics, kicked her legs, waved her arms, almost turned the boat over and said some more there are many different words that are nothing new even for a Venetian.

As a result, at the end of the boat trip, the poor thing found herself without her purse; her friend Christina helped her pay for lunch at the restaurant, and she also gave her a tablet of her validol, since Veronica’s validol floated into the Adriatic Sea with her purse.

All the way back the bus interior was buzzing like a disturbed beehive. Someone was seething, someone was calming someone down, some were jabbering vyingly that in Moscow and the Moscow region (it was from these places that the group was selected) there had been no problems with sewerage for a long time, everything was clean and civilized. Of course, the production of PVC pipes for sewage is clearly established there - these are advanced technologies and product quality.

Thanks to modern developments, both external sewerage and internal sewerage are organized very successfully.

Someone vowed to never set foot in this Venice again, “and tell others.” You can, of course, “not even step.” But if they, for example, did not have laptops (which is difficult to imagine) or could not read at all (which is even more difficult to imagine), then perhaps they would not have learned all this information. And as you know, the less you know, the better you sleep. Tourists, of course, may not go there. What about the indigenous people? They somehow live there from generation to generation! And they're fine. So everything in this life is comparative and relative...

Where do you think the contents of antique Venetian chamber pots go? Don’t you think so? :) That’s right - I also didn’t ask myself this question until September 26 of this year.

However, on this fateful day, the entry “And yet she is sinking” (about sinking Venice, if anyone is interested) appeared in my journal. The post unexpectedly received a bunch of comments. Among them was this: “Does the author of the post know that in Venice, like many centuries ago, there is still no sewage system at all, and its role is played by canals and sea currents, and all, excuse me, the waste of the Venetians is joyfully carried away into the Adriatic Sea during the ebb and flow of the tides, which completely suits the cheerful Venetians. Against this background, the tenderness at the sight of children frolicking in this very water is, to put it mildly, incomprehensible."

With great aplomb, I answered that the author knew everything... but I did this only after I had scoured the entire Internet in search of a worthy refutation. That is, how is it possible, there is no sewerage system, I thought, - after all, I have seen repair work in the canals more than once (they are closed for this time, the water is completely drained, and they are tinkering there without hindrance). There are many pipes laid at the bottom of the canals - one of them must be a sewer pipe - I had almost no doubt about this.

Imagine my surprise when, from the mass of information about plans to improve the sewer system, new knowledge crystallized - Venice really uses the same method as 500 years ago. The method, by the way, is quite effective: all Venetian palazzos have so-called septic tanks - in other words, settling tanks, at the bottom of which accumulates... uh... well, in general, a natural product :) And everything that is lighter than this waste actually ends up in the canal through holes in the wall (by the way, in Venice, vacuum cleaner boats work very effectively:).

Twice a day the tide ebbs and flows in the Venetian Lagoon, so all the water in the canals is constantly cleared, or rather replaced by new clean water. Therefore, stories about the terrible smell of Venice are greatly exaggerated. However, some amber is actually felt during strong low tides, which occur mainly at night. Then these sewer holes turn out to be above the water level and, accordingly, a smell appears, which in the literature has a veiled name ""eau du canal".

By the way, I laughed very hard when, in my research, I came across the blog of an Italian guy who “came in large numbers” to Venice (apparently, a student). Soon after moving, he also had a question: is there even a sewer system in Venice (I translate literally, a shit pipeline)? He just formulated it with youthful spontaneity: “Does all of Venice really constantly poop in the canal?” :) The guy decided to check this empirically: he pulled the cistern cord, rushed headlong to the window and saw that water had flowed out of the hole in the wall, but not Moreover:) The guy cheered up a little when he didn’t see any solid residues floating into the canal, but the experiment didn’t end there. Next, he poured dishwashing detergent into the toilet, drained the water and again ran to the window - foam flowed from the sewer hole exposed by the tide! Oh horror - the connection turned out to be direct and immediate!

As a very impressionable person, I immediately shared the terrible discovery with my husband, which caused him to have a fit of great joy. Well, come on, he laughed, but how do you think the sewage system in big cities works? Well, imagine - there are pipes, they lead to the same settling tanks, but somewhat larger and somewhat more advanced, and then the water (purified, but not sterile) is still discharged into rivers, seas and other places from which we drink and in which we swim. And indeed, I remembered my recent walk not far from the discharge of such water into our mountain stream - the smell of detergents is still very noticeable!

At first I was upset, and then I remembered Vladimir Voinovich and his Ivan Chonkin. And also the immortal phrase about the cycle of shit in nature :)) And you can’t argue against a classic :)

By the way, all this only applies to the historical center of Venice; newer peripheral areas are connected to the city sewerage system. The islands seem to be connected too.

As illustrations, I took photographs of winter, autumn and spring floods in a completely random order. The post was written specifically in connection with floods, so I don’t have any other pictures :)

5.

9.

11.

So everything is fine, gentlemen tourists! And floods are, perhaps, even a blessing, because they clean beautiful Venice better than any sewer truck. I read an interview with one of the former Venetian mayors about the protective structures being built. So the mayor there expressed a timid fear that these structures, by stopping water exchange in the canals, would cause another problem - stagnation of water and, accordingly, its pollution. Eh, eternal dualism :)

The moral of this fragrant fable is simple: I still love Venice, I will go there as often as before. But! I will splash around in high water on San Marco exclusively in high rubber boots - out of harm's way :)