Venice map curiosities
Let's take a moment to take a look at the map of Venice, does its shape remind you of somenthing? There is this book named "Venice is a fish" and if we take a close look we can see that the shape of the island totally remind us of it and the Bridge of Liberty would be the hook linking Venice with the Italian peninsula.
Is Venice Really an island?
In fact Venice is a set of islands. To be precise, the city is made
out of 118 islands linked by 430 bridges.
Venice sits on top of a salt lake, separated for the Adriatic sea by another island named Lido,
this fact is really important in the city's origins because in the year 421 the italian
peninsula got invaded by many civilizations which forced the inhabitants of many
cities to escape their home towns searching for safer places. The people living in the Mestre
area used the salt lake for fishing and knew it very well so when these civilizations attacked,
they
decided to move to the salt lake and build their houses there,
far of the reach of the enemies
armies.
But what about of the enemies boats? Well, the whole lake was packed
with natural canals which served as a defense system for the city, all the canals in venice
range from 0.5 meters to 2 meters deep which prevented large boats from sailing inside of the city
unless they knew very well the place in advance. This natural defense system prevented the
enemies of the city from invading it for more than 1,200 years.
The first person who successfully invaded Venice was Napoleon in 1797, before that the city was
totally calm making it an extremely prosperous settlement. But not all canals in Venice are this low. There are two specially deep
canals in the city: the Grand Canal ranging from 5 to 8 meters deep and the Giudecca Canal which is almost 15
meters deep, both where artificially made so larger boats, like cruise ships, could came into de city.
This is one stops of our WalkingTours App. If you want to take the whole historic tour of Venice download our iOS or Android app
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Emilio
Rodriguez
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Cadavid
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Rodriguez