Christo and Jeanne-Claude Create Giant Floating Walkway Connecting Lake Islands to Italy Mainland

In “Floating Piers“, the latest large-scale installation from Christo and Jeanne-Claude, a row of 200,000 strategically placed floating cubes create a viable walkway that stretches out across Lake Iseao, near Brescia, Italy, to the islands of San Paolo and Monte Isola to the mainland city of Sulzano, allowing visitors to walk on water. The project has been over a year in the making.

For sixteen days – June 18 through July 3, 2016 (weather permitting) – Italy’s Lake Iseo is being reimagined. 100,000 square meters of shimmering yellow fabric, carried by a modular floating dock system of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes, undulate with the movement of the waves as The Floating Piers rise just above the surface of the water. Visitors can experience this work of art by walking on it from Sulzano to Monte Isola and to the island of San Paolo, which is framed by The Floating Piers. The mountains surrounding the lake offer a bird’s-eye view of The Floating Piers, exposing unnoticed angles and altering perspectives. Lake Iseo is located 100 kilometers east of Milan and 200 kilometers west of Venice. …A 3-kilometer-long walkway was created as The Floating Piers extend across the water of Lake Iseo. The piers are 16 meters wide and approximately 35 centimeters high with sloping sides. The fabric continues along 2.5 kilometers of pedestrian streets in Sulzano and Peschiera Maraglio.