Splitting the Difference, Blue Ridge Mountains, November 2012

Out of the Ashes, Blue Ridge Mountains, November 2012

From the Telegraph: 

Around 70 per cent of Venice was flooded after days of relentless rainfall in a particularly severe ‘Acqua Alta’ or high water season with levels among the highest ever recorded, city officials said.

Despite all, the Guardian reflects on how the serenely ready the city, and especially its artistic patrimony, is for these recurring crises. 

You barely notice, on a dry summer day when the waters are confined to their canals, how systematically the art treasures of Venice are kept on the upper floors of palaces and museums. One museum runs across the highest storey of the arcaded buildings that frame Piazza San Marco, while paintings in the Accadamia Galleries are similarly ensconced above ground. It is far more worrying to think about all the art in churches. But the fact is that no other city has such an acute awareness of borrowing its existence from water – or so much skill in that regard.