‘Angels of the Salt’ help save city’s treasures

Young Venetians take action in face of floods

As soon as waters receded from this past week’s devastating flood, about 50 young Venetians wearing rubber boots and gripped by a sense of determination showed up at the city’s Music Conservatory to help save precious manuscripts.

Thanks to their work, some 50 linear meters of archival manuscripts, some dating from the 1500s, lay strewn in the conservatory’s upper floors to dry when Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini visited this weekend.

“This is our city,” said Laura Franco, a student at the conservatory who showed up with a handful of friends Saturday morning.

A growing network of more than 2,000 young Venetians are responding to the worst flood in their lifetimes to help salvage what they can, wherever help is needed.

Modeling their network after the so-called “Mud Angels” who famously poured into Florence from all over the world after the 1966 flood swamped that city’s treasures with mud from the Arno, these youth are calling themselves “Angels of the Salt,” for the corrosive saline content of the lagoon water.

Social networks allow them to be mustered where there is the greatest need. On Saturday that was the island of Burano and the hardest-hit area, the barrier island of Pellestrina, where one man died in Tuesday night’s floods.

“We are going to bookshops, to libraries, to shops and restaurants, giving them a hand to try to help out. And when we find a lot of trash piling up, we organize carts to clean it up so it doesn’t go in the water,” said Vittorio da Mosto.

Many have been helping out at the aptly named Acqua Alta bookstore, which poked fun at the frequent high tides that until recently would rise playfully and recede, as if another tourist attraction. But this week, the bookstore was swamped, with the invading lagoon nearly floating a gondola that serves as a book display and waterlogging countless books.

“I lost thousands and thousands of books, worth thousands and thousands of euros,” Luigi Frizzo said ruefully as he instructed the volunteers to bring the ruined books to a nearby boat for disposal.

Institutions like the Venice Music Conservatory limited the volunteers to current and former students after an enthusiastic first-day turnout of the so-called “Angels.”

“The problem was trying to stop all the volunteers. There were too many arriving with wet boots. We need people with some expertise,” said the conservatory’s president, Giovanni Giol. “We said thank you, but these are historic and they need to be handled with care.”

Giol said the manuscripts will be saved “thanks to the work of the volunteers.”

Irene Maria Giussani, a 22-yearold viola student, has been using absorbent paper to help prevent ink on the manuscripts from running, and standing up books, including precious volumes containing all of Wagner’s operas, to dry.

“It is mostly a disaster for the manuscripts because for some there aren’t even copies,” Giussani said. “It means the music is lost forever. As musicians, we know what that means.”

The most precious manuscripts were being transported Saturday to Bologna and Florence, where they will be frozen to block any mold and help push out the salt.

Most of the most famous works, including by composers like Rossini, Cimarosa and Monteverdi, were not touched by the water, Giol said.

When they renovate the library now, Giol said, first consideration will be to raise the level by more than a yard.

Luca Bruno The Associated Press Books are placed to dry Saturday on an upper floor of the Venice Music Conservatory after being recovered from the ground floor. High tidal waters returned to Venice on Saturday, four days after the city experienced its worst flooding in 50 years.