“In the fall of Venice think of thine.”
Lord George Gordon Byron, 'Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,' Canto IV, (2008 [1812], 153).

André Chastel, the French art historian, referred to “the Venetian challenge: the central episode of the crisis of modern civilization” (cited by Andrea Rinaldo in 'Sustainable Venice: Suggestions for the Future,' edited by Ignazio Musu, 2001, 61).

“Never like today has Venice spoken to historians and men in general in a language more real and universal, offering experience of a microcosm that goes along a path full of dilemmas, of a relationship that is risky and perennially precarious with nature.”
Piero Bevilacqua, Italian historian, La Sapienza University of Rome ('Venezia e le acque. Una metafora planetaria,' 2000, 20).