Why engineers sank seventy-eight giant steel gates to the bottom of the sea

Venice sits in a shallow lagoon open to the Adriatic through just three inlets, and in 1966 a storm shoved the tide to six feet four inches. A permanent wall would block ships and stop the tides that flush the lagoon. So engineers buried rows of concrete boxes across the inlets, each holding a hollow steel gate of up to 330 tons. Pumped full of compressed air, the gates float up on their hinges, and within about half an hour all seventy-eight stand as a wall that vanishes again when the storm passes. Sources: • Wikipedia — MOSE — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE • CNN 2019 — https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/venice-flood-basilica-mose/index.html • Artnet 2020 — https://news.artnet.com/art-world/venice-flood-barriers-1912983