If nothing is done to stop the encroaching sea, then yes. The problem that Venice faces is familiar to anyone living along the Thames estuary - the land is sinking while, thanks to global climate change, the sea is rising.
Flooding may well be a way of life for the Venetians but they do recognise that the situation is deteriorating. In 1900, the central area of the city around St Mark's square flooded around 10 times a year. Nowadays, that figure is closer to 100. Venice has sunk by around 20cm in the same time. And it's only going to get worse. Climatologists agree that global sea levels are likely to rise by up to 60cm by the end of the century, and this applies as much to the seas around Venice as to the big oceans. To try to address the problem, about 100 scientists met in Cambridge this week to work out what could be done to save the city. "It's a city that lies at sea level so it's very vulnerable to changes," says Caroline Fletcher, an environmental chemist and the Venice research fellow at Cambridge University, who is running the conference.
Without any action, she warns, the city will be uninhabitable by 2100. Fortunately, the Italian government has marked Venice as a priority for action and is trialling one possible solution. The city is at one end of a lagoon with three openings to the Adriatic sea. The Italian scientists are testing a mobile barrier that could move into place in these openings at high tide, thereby blocking out any surges of water during storms.
But predicting the tides over the next century is tricky. Fletcher says several groups are modelling the future weather patterns around the Mediterranean, but they know there is no guarantee of success. "There's definitely scientific uncertainty, but we're trying to synthesise a wealth of research that's gone on in Venice and come up with the state of knowledge because these systems are complex," she says. If Venice is to survive, Fletcher says, scientists must find a way to manage that uncertainty. And they'd better do it quickly.