Venice


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General Information

Venice (Italian: Venezia), the "city of canals", is the capital of the region of Veneto and of the province of Venice in Italy. Its population is 272,000 (2004). The city is included, with Padua (Padova), in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area, population 1,600,000. The city stretches across numerous small islands in the marshy Venetian Lagoon along the Adriatic Sea in northeast Italy. The saltwater lagoon stretches along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po (south) and the Piave (north) Rivers.

The population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; the historic city of Venice (Centro storico) inhabitants are around 62,000, while approximately 176,000 people live in Terraferma (literal dry land, it means the extra-lagoon areas) and 31,000 live in other islands of the lagoon.

The Venetian Republic was a major sea power and a staging area for the Crusades as well as a very important center of commerce (especially the spice trade) and art in the Renaissance. Venice is world-famous for its canals. It was built on an archipelago of 118 islands formed by about 150 canals in a shallow lagoon. The islands on which the city was built are connected by about 400 bridges. In the old center, the canals serve the function of roads, and every form of transport is on water or on foot.

In the 19th century a causeway to the mainland brought a railway station to Venice, and an automobile causeway and parking lot was added in the 20th century. Beyond these land entrances at the northern edge of the city, transportation within the city remains, as it was in centuries past, entirely on water or on foot. Venice is Europe's largest urban car-free area, unique in Europe in remaining a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.

The classical Venetian boat is the gondola although it is now mostly used for tourists, weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies. Most Venetians now travel by motorised waterbuses (called "vaporetto") which ply regular routes along the major canals and between the city's islands. The city also has many private boats. The only unmotorized gondolas still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferries crossing the Grand Canal at certain points without bridges.

Venice is served by the newly rebuilt Marco Polo International Airport (Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo [VCE]) named in honor of its famous citizen. The airport is on the mainland and was rebuilt away from the coast so that visitors now need to get a bus to the pier, from which a water taxi or Alilaguna waterbus can be used.

Source: Wikipedia