In November and December 2019, a series of extreme hide tides (acque alte), combined with extreme strong winds and torrential rain, caused heartbreaking damage to the city of Venice. Save Venice was born in response to the floods of 1966, the worst in Venice’s history, and the 2019 floods served as a stark reminder of the ongoing and urgent need to protect Venice’s irreplaceable artistic heritage.

Within days of the disaster, Save Venice launched the Immediate Response Fund (IRF) for artistic and cultural heritage recovery and preventative conservation, proudly partnering with the Embassy of Italy in Washington D.C. on the campaign #AmericaLovesVenice raising crucial dollars for the fund.

Read the full Press Release

Save Venice moved quickly to support efforts to mitigate the effects of corrosive saltwater and deposits in the churches, museums, and comparable public buildings that experienced the tidal flooding. Projects also included emergency conservation treatment for paintings, stonework, floors, wooden furnishings, and books and archival documents, as well as preventative conservation to minimalize damage from future extreme weather conditions, such as floods, heavy rain, and strong wind.

The ongoing impact of Save Venice’s swift actions spans across the city and to-date have benefitted more than 21 sites including:

12 Churches
Santa Maria Assunta on the Island of Torcello
Santa Maria dei Carmini
Santa Maria del Giglio
Santa Maria dei Miracoli
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
Santi Apostoli
Santi Maria e Donato on the Island of Murano
San Moisè
San Pantalon
San Polo
San Sebastiano
San Stae

2 Museums
Galleria Giorgio Franchetti at the Ca’ d’Oro
Jewish Museum in the Ghetto Ebraico di Venezia

2 Confraternities (scuole)
Scuola Dalmata di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni
Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista

4 Cultural and Educational Institutions
Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello in Palazzo Pisani
Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Fondazione Querini Stampalia
Teatro La Fenice

1 Cemetery
Jewish Cemetery on the Lido

By giving to the fund, your contribution will allow Save Venice to continue these vital efforts. Thank you for being an advocate and supporter for this remarkable city. We will continue to do what our track record proves we do best: protect Venice’s irreplaceable artistic heritage.
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Church of Santi Maria e Donato on the Island of Murano

This magnificent church is an extraordinary example of Save Venice’s longstanding dedication and commitment to preserving the artistic treasures of Venice. The organization’s concern for the fragile 12-century mosaic floor began in the 1970s , and continued with further maintenance and conservation from 2012 to 2015, and again in 2020 following the exceptional high tides in late 2019. The church’s low elevation makes it particularly vulnerable to flooding and the precious mosaic floor was submerged in corrosive seawater on multiple occasions over the course of several weeks. The delicate floor requires regular monitoring and maintenance, and the IRF continues to fund these vital interventions in 2025 and 2026.

At San Donato the IRF also funded the urgently-needed repair and replacement of damaged exterior brickwork, the replastering of the church’s interior, and restoration of the exterior wooden doors.

In 2023, the church’s holy water font was also restored thanks to the IRF. The font is made up of an octagonal base in Aurisina stone thought to be of Roman origin dating to the 2^nd century A.D. with an added basin in Greek marble. Following its prolonged exposure to corrosive salt water during the exceptional high tides (acqua alta) in 2019, the base began showing signs of rapid deterioration. It was desalinated in a vat of deionized water, detached pieces were repaired, and its base was consolidated with resins to prevent the further excessive absorption of salts in the porous stone. It was reinstalled on top of a protective lead sheet to further protect it from the rising damp.

Church of Santa Maria dei Carmini

The church of the Carmini’s elevation makes it particularly vulnerable to acqua alta, and in November and December of 2019, it was inundated with corrosive sea water on numerous occasions. In 2019, Save Venice’s IRF funded emergency relief efforts in the church, including the purchase of pumps to remove standing water, and the installation of new temporary barriers in the exterior doorways to help keep out water from successive high tides.

In late 2023, Save Venice was alerted that Jacopo Tintoretto’s Presentation of Christ in the Temple  altarpiece on the right nave was exhibiting condition problems caused by the accumulation of damp debris along the bottom of the frame. This debris originated from the wall behind and was due to the lingering long-term effects of the exceptional high tides in 2019. Thankfully, the damage did not harm Tintoretto’s original work and was isolated to the repairs and fills that were applied during Save Venice’s 2001 restoration. With funding from the IRF, conservator Egidio Arlango and his team led a 2024 maintenance intervention, stabilizing and consolidating the damaged areas, cleaning the painting’s surface, and applying a final layer of protective varnish. The debris was cleared from the altar and the wall, and the wall behind the altar was repaired. Lastly, a new supportive framework was applied to the perimeter of the canvas to ensure it is isolated and protected from future exposure to any damp surroundings, while also improving the natural circulation of air between the wall and the altarpiece.

Scuola Dalmata di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni

The Scuola Dalmata is another example of Save Venice’s longstanding dedication to preservation. 2019 IRF efforts supported repairs for damaged woodwork and flooring on the ground floor.

Over the summer of 2024, severe rainstorms led to leaks in the attic and second floor. Thankfully, conservators from UNISVE and the Istituto Veneto per i Beni Culturali were already on site, conducting maintenance on the façade through Save Venice’s project. Utilizing the worksite’s scaffolding, the conservation team were able to quickly trace the leaks to an area of displaced tiles on the roof and cracks in the stonework around the windows. Save Venice’s IRF funded the essential repairs needed on the roof and exterior, ensuring the 16th-century building and the artworks within are protected from future leaks.

Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello in Palazzo Pisani

During Venice’s exceptional high tides in 2019, the city’s music conservatory experienced severe damage on its ground floor, most notably in the Biblioteca Mario Messinis, one of the most important historical music libraries in Italy. Countless antique publications and musical scores were exposed to the corrosive sea water. Save Venice’s IRF funded emergency relief efforts to recover and restored the irreplaceable volumes, as well as the conservation of a 18th-century terrazzo floor.

Church of Santi Apostoli

The church of Santi Apostoli in the sestiere of Cannaregio was one of Venice’s many landmarks that suffered devastating effects caused by the record acque alte that struck the city in November and December 2019. During each exceptional high tide, several centimeters of corrosive sea water entered the church, permeating the foundations, floors, and porous masonry. In the days and weeks that followed, the dampness continued to rise up the walls, increasing the relative humidity of the church and leaving detrimental salt deposits behind. Many of the artworks that hang on the walls and side altars around the church began showing alarming condition problems due to this drastic change in their microclimate. Thanks to the support of Save Venice’s Immediate Response Fund, conservators were able to perform crucially needed interventions to mitigate the effects of these unprecedented events.

One of the artworks in the church to benefit from treatment was Domenico Maggiotto’s 18th-century altarpiece of Saint Catherine of Alexandria with Saints Anthony Abbot, Jerome, and Giovanni Nepomuceno. A large area at the bottom of the painting was suffering from rapid decay caused by the prolonged exposure to excessive humidity and falling debris from the damp wall behind the canvas. Conservators from the Mauve firm conducted an emergency maintenance treatment on the painting, which also included the installation of a new protective barrier of alveolar polycarbonate on the back of the stretcher to help minimize any future exposure to dampness from the wall.

This IRF initiative also permitted the Mauve firm to carry out urgently-needed conservation treatment on five other paintings in the church, including Giambattista Tiepolo’s Communion of Santa Lucia, Gaspare Diziani’s Madonna and Child with Saints Joseph, John the Baptist, and Anthony of Padova, and Giovanni Contarini’s Birth of the Virgin. 

Conservation efforts in the church also focused on the Cornaro Chapel, which was designed by Mauro Codussi in the 1490s, and once housed the remains of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, before they were moved to the church of San Salvador in 1584. When Santi Apostoli was rebuilt in the mid-1700s, the chapel was re-incorporated into the newer church. As it sits at a lower elevation than the 18th-century section of the church, the Cornaro Chapel is even more prone to flooding when acqua alta occurs. On the evening of November 12, 2019 the water in the chapel rose to nearly 40cm deep.

Conservators from the Seres firm removed the harmful salts that deposited on the walls and Codussi’s precious Renaissance decoration while securing any deteriorated areas that were at risk of detaching.

What is the difference between acqua alta and other types of flooding?

Venice is located on the sea and the water level in the city’s canals is determined by the sea tide level. The city usually experiences two high tides and two low tides in each 24-hour period.

Acqua alta occurs when the predicted tide level is above the elevation of the city’s streets and ground floors, causing temporary tidal flooding in some areas. Acqua alta is temporary and usually lasts only a few hours before the water completely recedes. Events can range from minor, with just a few centimeters of water covering low-lying areas of the city, such as Piazza San Marco, to exceptional, with several feet of water flooding most of the city’s streets and inundating the ground floors of buildings throughout Venice.

Venetians are resilient and are equipped to deal with routine/seasonal acqua alta. When it occurs, they usually put on their boots and go about their business as normal. Raised walkways are set up around the city to allow citizens and visitors alike to walk the streets, every corner store sells high water boots, and only very rarely is a vaporetto re-routed or an event cancelled.

Information about the MOSE flood gates

After decades of construction and testing, Venice’s MOSE flood gates were activated for the first time on October 3, 2020. Since then, they have been raised 157 times to protect the city from exceptional high tides of 110 cm and above. Because the system is currently operated only above that threshold, low-lying areas, including Piazza San Marco, still experience regular tidal flooding, particularly in autumn and winter.

On November 22, 2022, MOSE spared the city another record-high tide, averting a disaster on the scale of 1966 or 2019. The system is now managed and maintained by the Autorità per la Laguna di Venezia, which estimates that in its first years of operation, MOSE has already prevented the equivalent of five months of flooding and more than €3 billion in potential acqua alta damage, against construction costs to date of over €6 billion. Each closure of the gates costs upwards of €200,000.

Because MOSE is still new, its long-term impact on the lagoon ecosystem and on the city’s historic buildings is not yet fully understood. With sea levels continuing to rise, the gates may need to close far more often than originally planned, and for longer periods, threatening the health of the lagoon and straining financial resources.

MOSE is a vital line of defence, but it cannot undo what water, salt, and time have already done to Venice’s treasures. Protecting the city takes both the barrier at the lagoon’s edge and care for what lies within, and Save Venice is more dedicated than ever to that mission.

For more information, visit:

Autorità per la Laguna di Venezia

Amy Gross, Executive Director | amy@savevenice.org

Melissa Conn, Director, Venice office | melissa@savevenice.org

NPR: Venice Hit By A Record 3rd High Tide