Divagazioni botaniche. Le osservazioni di Alessandro Marcello del Majno sull’ambiente lagunare

The relationship between botanical traces, urban geographies, and architectural components marks the development of Venice, the construction of its memory as a palimpsest, and the establishment of a resilient urban canon. In Venice the vegetation naturalizes the city and nature is in turn urbanized by a symbolic and ritualized landscape. This paper argues that the analysis of the dynamics of this exchange can transform the design of the urban landscape from a purely visual and functional approach to another approach, more attentive to the less visible aspects of space. What stories do gardens, open spaces, ʻurban floraʼ of Venice tell? What do they say about the city, its past and, perhaps more importantly, its future? Through a novel interdisciplinary approach and starting from the observations of the naturalist Alessandro Marcello del Majno, this essay shifts the focus from an urban culture of nature to a culture of urban nature that reverberates the environmental paradigm of a Venetian Anthropocene.