Road to Venice

For 1,400 years no enemy could reach island Venice by land. Navigation was difficult in the lagoon that separates it from the mainland. Venetians skated over the shallows in flat-bottomed gondolas, floated their houses on piles in the alluvial mud, cherished their "splendid isolation." They lost part of it when an iron railway viaduct was strung across the Laguna Venetia in 1846. But not until last week did a road, of brick and stone and concrete, ever attach Venice, "Pearl of the Adriatic," to Italy's mainland.

Venetians had been arguing about a road to the mainland since 1898. Long-range guns made Venice's isolation valueless as a defense. But it was still a pretty sentiment. In 1931 Benito Mussolini briskly ordered work on the road begun and that night St. Mark's Square in Venice blazed with Venetian lanterns and bengal lights. Opened last week, the road is 57 mi. long, 2 1/2 mi. of it a bridge over the lagoon proper, strung on arches sunk in the mud. It runs beside the railway viaduct and between the two is a concrete groove reserved for bicyclists. At the city end is Europe's biggest garage to take in the automobiles that will enter roadless Venice by its only motor entrance. Some Venetians muttered that it was significant that Venice's link to the main land was opened on the 2,686th birthday of Rome.

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