Every Then & Theory plate comes from a true story, and this card tells the one behind yours.

The Then & Theory team

A city on a forest

A city stands above the water, and its twin runs on below the surface. The plate names no city. Venice, the best-known city built over water, spreads across 118 islands in a lagoon, and its buildings rest on huge numbers of wooden piles driven into the soft mud and clay. Builders laid platforms of planks on the piles, then brick and stone on top. In the waterlogged mud there is too little oxygen for the fungi that rot wood, so the piles have lasted for centuries, hardened by minerals over time.

Sources

1. Britannica, “How was Venice built on water?”