Twenty years ago it was just a cliff that was intended to defend the breakwater from the fury of the sea. Today it is one of the most beautiful open-air galleries in Italy. It is the "Living Cliff" of Caorle, made up of boulders of Euganean trachyte that from the Sanctuary of the Madonna dell’Angelo runs along the coast until it passes the Piazza del Duomo.
The credit for giving life to the stone of the cliff goes to the Treviso sculptor Sergio Longo, who was the first to understand the artistic value of this stretch of coast. Longo, an artist who loved Caorle and its history, in July 1992 took a hammer and chisel and created the first sculpture. Longo chose Neptune as his subject: who better than the God of the Sea could inaugurate this expanse of stones located on the border between sea and land? The sculptor from Treviso then chose to give a companion to Neptune, a splendid nymph. These two works aroused so much interest among residents and tourists that it became almost inevitable the start of an organizational path which, thanks to the precious collaboration of Longo, led in the summer of 1993 to the creation of the first edition of the international outdoor sculpture symposium. "Living Reef".
From 1993 to today sculptors from all over the world (Ireland, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, Israel, etc ...). Among the Italians, it is worth mentioning some great names in the world of sculpture who have created some of the masterpieces visible today on the cliff of Caorle: Licata, Celiberti and Voltolina above all. The themes of this long open-air gallery, now made up of over a hundred subjects, are the most diverse: from mythology to love, from the natural and animal world to the metaphysical one, from life to the interior of man.