Venice in Peril Fund

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The Venice in Peril Fund is a British registered charity. It raises funds to restore and conserve works of art and architecture in Venice, and to investigate ways to protect them against future risks, particularly rising sea levels.

The Venice in Peril Fund was established in 1966 by the former British ambassador to Italy, Sir Ashley Clarke, after floods in Florence and Venice threatened their historic art treasures. At the first meeting were John Julius Norwich (historian and writer), Carla Thorneycroft (Italian-born wife of Conservative MP Peter Thorneycroft), and Natalie Brooke (wife of Humphrey Brooke, the secretary of the Royal Academy). Originally named the Italian Art and Archives Rescue Fund, it became the Venice in Peril Fund in 1971. It receives a significant level of funding from the sale of the Pizza Veneziana at branches of Pizza Express.

As of 2007, the Fund has contributed to the conservation and restoration of 23 buildings in Venice, including the Gothic Porta della Carta of the Doge's Palace. Three-quarters of its funds have been spent on religious buildings, including the late Gothic church of the Madonna dell'Orto in Cannaregio, the ancient Veneto-Byzantine aisled church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, and the 16th century Cappella Emiliani on the cemetery island of San Michele. A new project is the restoration of a hydraulic crane inside the Arsenale, built by Armstrong Mitchell in Newcastle in 1883, one of only two remaining in the world.

The water level in the Venice has risen 23 cm since 1900, due to a combination of subsidence and the level of the Venice lagoon rising. Venice in Peril organised a symposium in London in 1998 to discuss the risk to low-lying cities, including Venice, as a result of rising sea levels, and funded the creation of research fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge from 2001 to 2004 to investigate ways to protect Venice from rising sea levels. A conference was held in Cambridge in 2003, and a book The Science of Saving Venice was published in 2004.