Venice - Italy, was built on over 100 individual islands, planting wooden piles, *5 meters long (not *25 m), in the unstable ground of the lagoon. Surrounded by salt mud and in the absence of oxygen under water, the wooden piles do not rot but petrify permanently, thus forming the perfect foundations of the city. Venice has always had to coexist with the water that surrounds it and with the erosion that it causes especially to the banks. This is why the latter are protected by the white stone of Istria. In many cases, to expand the building areas, entire areas of the lagoon were filled. Before starting to build the buildings overlooking the canals, the Venetians planted wooden piles in the ground