New artwork has been added to the city’s canal collection

The floating city of Venice now has a new claim to fame, with a giant floating fresco sailing through the canals.

The work of a French-Swiss graffiti artist is a close-up of two people’s hands holding each other.

The artist says his work is part of a global project, designed to promote “Finding common solutions” to the problems humanity faces.

Floating through the Venetian canals, he adds this is symbolic of the fragile times we are living through given “Venice is a city that floats on water” at the mercy of climate change.

The city is gradually sinking

In 2019, Venice experienced the second-worst flood in history with fears of the increasing impact of climate change.

Venice’s layout, built on log piles among cannels, makes the city vunrable to climate change. Especially as the rising sea levels are leading to the gradual inundating of the 1,600-year-old city.

According to a recent study published by the European Geosciences Union, Venice’s worst-case scenario for the rise in sea level by the end of the century is 120 centimetres.

Savannah Pocock contributed to this article.