The medieval town of Brescia, known for its food, wine, and architecture, lays at the foot of the Alps on Lake Iseo in northern Italy. In 2016, it was the hub of crisis for Christo’s second environmental work since the death of his partner and wife, Jeanne Claude. This time he had masterminded an artistic, yet dangerous, engineering experiment – a floating orange walkway across part of Lake Iseo.
Soon it became evident that city officials had allowed too many people to walk the floating path at once. Christo and his crew were panicked about a disaster. No one had counted on a flood of 55,000 people. Then a child was lost.