«In our experience, there coexists a city of walls and a city of people. In the city of people there exists a soul of their community: an invisible city which shapes and modifies the visible city as time goes by. The invisible city is always with us and within us: because, in the end, we are the ones who form the invisible city».
-Salvatore Settis, Se Venezia muore 

In the last centuries, the inhabitants and the municipal administrations abused, exploited and defaced the city. They modified and reshaped it without taking into account the inner desire of Venice: to be re-joined with the sea. The invisible city is no longer willing to be killed softly: it has decided to become Ophelia. She yearns to return to the water from which she emerged, hugged by the sea that has always loved courting her, for centuries, at her thousands of feet! Venice, under water and salt, will not have only one reflection in the lagoon, but infinite. She will mirror in every drop and every fish scale. For the first time, the lagoon will stop breathing and tides will not come in and out anymore. The image of Venice will be suspended in time and mingle with its past. Without the corrosion from the sour air, left soaking in the tepid brines, the city will remain in eternal life. The shell, now closed, will forever protect its pearl. The Venetian people have always known that this would be the destiny of the city. Those who preferred not to be present for the city’s first true marriage without ritual with the sea have put their feet to dry a long time ago in Mestre. The others, became amphibians, swimming through the streets and walking along the Grand Canal, living the city without a purpose: regaining their citizenship. This project, currently under way, investigates the territory of the lagoon, suggesting a reflection on the importance of the element of water that the civilization of Venice has always had. With the prerogative to not only put in act a simple critical investigation of the territory, my research also concentrates on visually describing the hypothetical and symbiotic reunification that the city and the citizens re-discover with the sea.