VISIT
VENICE INFORMATION AND SMALL GUIDE
"Venice is like eating a whole box of liquor chocolates at
once." Truman Capote
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Venice is
one of the few places in the world where every time
you go, even after years, it seems to be suspended
between reality and imagination, and where the
former always exceeds the latter. Even if you have
the incredible impression of being plunged into
another world (for those who are not used to it) is
all wonderfully true and unique.
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 Do
you also have one or two days off? Well, go to Venice and feast
your eyes. Its scenarios will calm you down. A little break will
seem like a piece of eternity. Those who really understand the
true soul of Venice would consider every corner of this
city to put it on the cover of a travel guide: whether it
is one of the most famous tourist attractions, a small church, a
bridge, a souvenir shop or a small street a bit anonymous.
Venice is a work of art in itself, a large open-air museum,
included by UNESCO in 1987 in the list of World Heritage
Sites.
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The city is home to artistic and architectural elements unique in the world,
which after centuries of such splendor still attract millions of visitors. Many
cities are called, the Venice of the North or the South for the simple
fact of having canals, or being formed by a set of islands. Some of them are
beautiful, like
Amsterdam,
Bruges or
Stockholm, but none are
comparable, not even remotely to the original.
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Every day, thousands of tourists come to the city from
all over the world, not only to admire the most famous
attractions but also to attend famous events, including
Carnival, the "Biennale del Cinema" (Movie
Festival) and many others. Venice is a city of indescribable
charm, one of those few places to visit at least once in your
life.
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Lord Byron described it as a place of immortal
beauty, praised and loved by many before (and after)
him. A city that according to historians was born around
the fifth century, built on swampy land and surrounded
by the sea, seasoned with a series of complex canals,
which later became popular for the colorful Venetian
gondolas. |
 The
"city of bridges", as it is commonly called, extends
along the mouth of the rivers Po and Piave rivers
and has developed historically into one of the most powerful
cities in the Mediterranean; for centuries and during its heyday
was the Serenissima Republic of Venice.
 Today,
of its more than 270,000 inhabitants about 60,000 live in the
historic center (city of Venice proper), the rest resides
in the so-called "mainland" of Mestre and in the hundreds
of islands of the lagoon. The area includes 118 islets, located
in the districts called 'sestieri' (which are six in
total) of which the most famous are Cannaregio, Santa
Croce, San Marco, Dorsoduro, San Polo.
Other important districts include the islands of Murano
and Burano and Mestre, the latter is connected to
Venice by a bridge five kilometers long.
Street names are written in small white squares on the
outside of buildings and are called "nizioleti". The 'calli'
are instead the streets, with unusual names and usually taken
from a historical event that took place right on the spot, or
from the work of people who lived in that street or square, as
well as in other historical Italian cities. The real streets
in Venice, however, are the canals, as evidenced by the fact
that the main door in the ancient buildings was, and is, the one
that always led to the waters.
 Between
one street and another, a small and one large canal, the city is
slowly discovered by the visitor: the only pedestrian city in
the world is in fact easily accessible on foot and the absence
of cars makes the experience particularly enjoyable. However,
walking and still standing all day can also be tiring, so it is
good to organize well before you start your sightseeing tours.
The Rialtine Islands, the tourist area par excellence,
are sufficiently small and therefore easily passable from one
end to the other in about an hour. Waterbuses, or Vaporetti,
are generally the best way to get around and are cheaper than
private water taxis. If you want a romantic trip along the
canals the gondola is obviously an experience not to be
missed, but get ready to spend a lot of money. It becomes almost
impossible to get around the city without a good map at
hand, as mentioned above Venice is divided into sestieri and the
houses are numbered by "sestieri" and not by "Vie". Often,
orientation becomes easy only if you know the proximity of a
monument, an attraction or anyway a famous place.
 The
city's monuments and tourist attractions have fascinated
travelers for centuries, and continue to do so today. The
decadent buildings have never seemed so romantic as in Venice,
where the soft tones of secular palaces are reflected in the
waters of the canals with an elegance never seen elsewhere. The
slow flow of the gondolas, the visit to
St. Mark's Square
or simply, sipping a coffee near the
Bridge of Sighs,
become unforgettable experiences for anyone who has been lucky
enough to live them. Along the
Canal Grande
and its narrow tributaries, the gaze rises, from the
Bell Tower of San Marco, to the domes of the
churches and the Renaissance palaces, to rest gently
on the arched bridges and hidden streets.
The crowd of visitors is captured by the beauty of the mosaics
on the ceiling of the great
Basilica of San Marco,
one of the most important architectural monuments in the world
and a cultural bridge between Europe and the eastern gate,
Byzantium. Since 1094 the church (which became a cathedral in
1807) offers a fascinating mix of styles and ornaments
unique in the world: the ceiling is a set of mosaics in gold and
bronze, embellished with an invaluable variety of stones
depicting biblical scenes. The current building is a replacement
for an earlier church dating from the year 828, built to house
the relics of St. Mark recovered by Venetian merchants
from Alexandria. The relics are now located under the
high altar of the church.
 The
Serenissima was ruled by the "Doge" and the
Doge's Palace of Venice
was their base: it was used for a variety of different functions
(from residence to court, to prison, to administrative and
ceremonial center of the Venetian Empire) and can still be
admired today overlooking the lagoon and one side of St. Mark's
Square. Its lower facade, reworked over the centuries, is
distinguished by the porticoes and columns that gently support
the weight of the entire building. Inside there are precious
works of art by
Giovanni Bellini,
Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese, among others,
not to be missed is also a visit to the room that houses the
frescoes of the world maps once known. Art in Venice
hasn't passed away, as demonstrated by the grandiose
Peggy Guggenheim
Collection, one of the most important
museums in the world for 20th century art, with artists such as
Magritte, Picasso, Kandinsky, Pollock, Ernst, Giacometti,
Brancusi, Braque,
Dalí,
Léger, Mondrian, Chagall and
Miró,
just to name a few, absolutely not to be missed.
If you think you are lost and suddenly you see the profile of a
rather strange bridge, then there is no need to worry, you are
in the center. The
Rialto Bridge
is one of the eternal symbols of Venice, at different times
several wooden bridges were built here, but they were all
destroyed by fire. In 1444 the bridge collapsed under the weight
of the crowd gathered to see the wife of the Marquis of
Ferrara,
Leonello d'Este, Maria of Aragon, illegitimate daughter
of Alfonso V of Aragon. Today's bridge is made of stone
and was built in the 16th century.
We can not finish this brief overview of the city without
talking about the famous 'high
water', which often becomes a reason for joy and
happiness, a centuries-old tradition and one of those moments to
be immortalized in a photograph. Technically speaking, the
phenomenon occurs a couple of times a year in the presence of a
very high tide: low atmospheric pressure and strong winds force
the waters of the Adriatic Sea to head into the lagoon.
In the following pages we will be able to tell Venice a little
more closely, hoping to be able to keep with us the truest and
most real soul of this unique Italian city, a business card of
the country that the world envies you. So, good Venice!
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Ostelli Venezia
Ostelli Italia
Auberges de Jeunesse
Italie
Hotel Venezia
Carte de Venise
Karte von Venedig
Mapa Venecia
Map of Venice
Carte de Venetie
Karte von Venetien
Mapa Veneto
Map of Veneto
Carte d'Italie
Karte von Italien
Mapa Italia
Map of Italy
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