Table of Contents
A flood that created a movement
The Aqua Granda set off an extraordinary response. A network of active international private Committees formed, and unprecedented resources were mobilised to support the protection and vitality of Venice.
UNESCO played a leading role. It promoted an International fundraising Campaign for Venice and, in 1973, established its own presence in the city, which later became the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe.
The campaign marked a milestone in global cooperation for the protection of cultural heritage and contributed to the adoption of the Special Law for Venice. Its archive is unique in the history of UNESCO’s safeguarding campaigns and is of great importance at national and international levels.
What remains of that effort is a vast record. The institutional archives and historical audiovisual collections of the UNESCO Office in Venice document more than 50 years of international and public-private cooperation to protect the historical, archaeological, artistic, and landscape heritage of Venice and its Lagoon (1966-2015).
The collection includes:
- Around 110,000 documents on the International Campaign for Venice and on UNESCO’s work to safeguard the city
- A photographic collection covering 1970 to 2017, with around 6,000 photographs
- Audiovisual materials in various formats
Bringing the archive online
Today, UNESCO and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini are launching a project to digitise and promote these archives. Over the next two years, the work will be carried out at the Foundation’s Digital Centre, and the materials will gradually be made available to scholars, researchers, and the public.
The project focuses on two chapters of the story: the archive of projects undertaken as part of the International Campaign for Venice (1966-1992), and the joint UNESCO-International Private Committees Programme for the Safeguarding of Venice (1992-2015).
For Magdalena Landry, Director of the UNESCO Regional Bureau in Venice, the archive is about people as much as projects:
“The UNESCO archives not only document the work carried out, they also enable us to piece together the roles played by the women and men involved, as well as the decisions, knowledge, and institutional relationships that made it possible. Preserving this documentary heritage over the long term and making it accessible contributes to historical understanding, but also to the transparency of institutional action.”
The Fondazione Giorgio Cini brings its Digital Centre to the effort. Its President, Gianfelice Rocca, said:
“Through its Digital Centre, the Foundation is bringing its expertise and laboratories – now internationally recognised – to this newly launched project. This is work directed towards the future, an ongoing process that opens up opportunities for new generations of scholars, new research, and new narratives. The project serves both the local and international community, and demonstrates that archives are living entities and essential tools for understanding the present.”
Training the next generation
Digitisation will broaden access to essential documentation for reconstructing the history of crucial events for Venice, and of UNESCO’s efforts to safeguard it. The project also builds skills for young people, with scholarships for training new professionals in archive digitisation.
The archive will not only be preserved but also put to use. The project will showcase documentation on major restoration projects carried out in Venice, through the creative reuse of digital resources in new artistic and narrative initiatives.
Sixty years after the water rose, the story of how the world responded is ready to be read, researched and retold.
