By Matthew Wills
The recent acqua alta in Venice has been described as the worst flooding in 50 years. This makes it the second worst “high water” in the last century for the sea-besieged city. The disastrous record of 1966 still stands. Memories of that flood, which sparked an international rescue program for art and architecture, were naturally revived by the most recent flooding.
Fewer people remember that, on the same day as Venice’s record, November 4, 1966, Florence suffered its worst ever flooding. Florence is thirty miles from the Mediterranean. The flooding was not caused by a high tide backing up into the city, but by torrential rainfall—8 inches in 35 hours, after an abnormally wet autumn—and by the decision to release water from dams upriver.