Where the ground is peat, silt or marsh, buildings were carried on forests of timber piles — alder in Venice, spruce and pine in Holland — driven by hand or horse-powered ram until they reached a firm sand layer or gained enough skin friction. Capped with grillages of timber beams and then masonry, the piles stay sound as long as they remain below the water table and out of contact with oxygen. Amsterdam's Royal Palace on the Dam (1648) stands on 13,659 piles; whole canal frontages were built the same way. Pile-driving costs, and the depth of the bearing sand, priced the ground and disciplined building heights.
Pile foundations allowed permanent, taxable, multi-storey cities to be built on deltas, lagoons and reclaimed land that would otherwise carry only light structures. They underwrite the entire canal-ring model of Amsterdam and the survival of Venice, and shaped plot depths, party-wall construction and the economics of speculative land development in the Low Countries. Later concrete and steel piling, and the caisson, are direct descendants.
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