Twenty-first century Venice would probably confound the famous figures from Byron to Henry James who have visited the watery streets in pursuit of carnal or aesthetic gratification.

John Ruskin would find his "golden clasp on the girdle of the Earth" more than a little tarnished by the advertising billboards that cling to crumbling palazzi while Canaletto himself might struggle to capture the light bouncing off the bright, white sides of the vast cruise ships that traverse the lagoon in which Venice sits.

However, according to one conservation group, the greatest threat to the city is not commerce or tourism but plans to create an enormous cargo port which, it says, would further raise the dangerously high water levels and do irreparable damage to an already "chronically fragile" place.

At a press conference in London yesterday, Venice in Peril, a British committee dedicated to preserving the city, attacked the Port Authority of Venice's proposals for the regeneration of the industrial zone around Porto Marghera.

Source: guardian.co.uk