Historically, Venice was not confined to the dense network of isole shaped from sandbars in the early Middle Ages and cleaved by the Grand Canal. Rather, it was an interlinked archipelago stretching the length and breadth of the lagoon, in which a variety of innovative, incompatible, or inconvenient functions were diffused. Today, communities in the lagoon and its margins—tourists, residents, and commuters, alike—move separately along highly prescribed routes, yet rarely across the surface of the water that connects them. ...more