56 Facts About Venice

Together with the cities of Padua and Treviso, Venice is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.

For centuries Venice possessed numerous territories along the Adriatic Sea and within the Italian peninsula, leaving a significant impact on the architecture and culture that can still be seen today.

Venice has been known as "La Dominante", "La Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", and "City of Canals".

Parts of Venice are renowned for the beauty of their settings, their architecture, and artwork.

Venice is known for several important artistic movements—especially during the Renaissance period—and has played an important role in the history of instrumental and operatic music, and is the birthplace of Baroque composers Tomaso Albinoni and Antonio Vivaldi.

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Ravenna and Venice were connected only by sea routes, and with the Venetians' isolation came increasing autonomy.

In recognition of this, Venice was "granted numerous privileges and concessions" and Ursus, who had personally taken the field, was confirmed by Leo as dux.

Venice ordered the pope to expel the Venetians from the Pentapolis along the Adriatic coast; Charlemagne's own son Pepin of Italy, king of the Lombards, under the authority of his father, embarked on a siege of Venice itself.

Republic of Venice seized a number of places on the eastern shores of the Adriatic before 1200, mostly for commercial reasons, because pirates based there were a menace to trade.

In building its maritime commercial empire, Venice dominated the trade in salt, acquired control of most of the islands in the Aegean, including Crete, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and became a major power-broker in the Near East.

Venice remained closely associated with Constantinople, being twice granted trading privileges in the Eastern Roman Empire, through the so-called golden bulls or "chrysobulls", in return for aiding the Eastern Empire to resist Norman and Turkish incursions.

Venice became an imperial power following the Fourth Crusade, which, having veered off course, culminated in 1204 by capturing and sacking Constantinople and establishing the Latin Empire.

Venice subsequently carved out a sphere of influence in the Mediterranean known as the Duchy of the Archipelago, and captured Crete.

Venice's leading families vied with each other to build the grandest palaces and to support the work of the greatest and most talented artists.

Venice remained a republic throughout its independent period, and politics and the military were kept separate, except when on occasion the Doge personally headed the military.

Venice was threatened with the interdict on a number of occasions and twice suffered its imposition.

Venice confronted the Ottoman Empire in the Siege of Thessalonica and sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the besieging Turks in 1453.

Venice began to lose its position as a center of international trade during the later part of the Renaissance as Portugal became Europe's principal intermediary in the trade with the East, striking at the very foundation of Venice's great wealth.

However, Venice remained a major exporter of agricultural products and until the mid-18th century, a significant manufacturing center.

Venice removed the gates of the Ghetto and ended the restrictions on when and where Jews could live and travel in the city.

Venice was taken from Austria by the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805 and became part of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy.

On 29 April 1945, a force of British and New Zealand troops of the British Eighth Army, under Lieutenant General Freyberg, liberated Venice, which had been a hotbed of anti-Mussolini Italian partisan activity.

Venice sits atop alluvial silt washed into the sea by the rivers flowing eastward from the alps across the Veneto plain, with the silt being stretched into long banks, or lidi, by the action of the current flowing around the head of the Adriatic Sea from east to west.

Subsidence, the gradual lowering of the surface of Venice, has contributed—along with other factors—to the seasonal Acqua alta when much of the city's surface is occasionally covered at high tide.

In 1604, to defray the cost of flood relief, Venice introduced what could be considered the first example of a "stamp tax".

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Since 1991, the Church of San Giorgio dei Greci in Venice has become the see of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Malta and Exarchate of Southern Europe, a Byzantine-rite diocese under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, written in the late 16th century, features Shylock, a Venetian Jew.

Venice was governed by centre-left parties from the early 1990s until the 2010s, when the Mayor started to be elected directly.

Today, Venice's economy is mainly based on tourism, shipbuilding, services, trade, and industrial exports.

Venice is an important destination for tourists who want to see its celebrated art and architecture.

Venice is regarded by some as a tourist trap, and by others as a "living museum".

Venice is Europe's largest urban car-free area and is unique in Europe in having remained a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.

Venice People Mover is an elevated shuttle train public transit system connecting Tronchetto island with its car parking facility with Piazzale Roma where visitors arrive in the city by bus, taxi, or automobile.

Mainland of Venice is composed of 5 boroughs: Mestre-Carpenedo, Marghera, Chirignago-Zelarino, and Favaro Veneto.

Venice is serviced by regional and national trains, including trains to Florence, Milan (2h13), Turin (3h10), Rome (3h33), and Naples (4h50).

Port of Venice is the eighth-busiest commercial port in Italy and was a major hub for the cruise sector in the Mediterranean, as since August 2021 ships of more 25, 000 tons are forbidden to pass the Giudecca Canal.

The city hosts the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, founded in 1868; the Universita Iuav di Venezia, founded in 1926; the Venice International University, founded in 1995 and located on the island of San Servolo and the EIUC-European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation, located on the island of Lido di Venezia.

Venice has long been a source of inspiration for authors, playwrights, and poets, and at the forefront of the technological development of printing and publishing.

Poet Ugo Foscolo, born in Zante, an island that at the time belonged to the Republic of Venice, was a revolutionary who wanted to see a free republic established in Venice following its fall to Napoleon.

Venice inspired the poetry of Ezra Pound, who wrote his first literary work in the city.

Additionally, Thomas Mann's novella, Death in Venice, was the basis for Benjamin Britten's eponymous opera (1973).

Venice at the time was a rich and prosperous Maritime Republic, which controlled a vast sea and trade empire.

Venice is built on unstable mud-banks, and had a very crowded city centre by the Middle Ages.

Venice has a rich and diverse architectural style, the most prominent of which is the Gothic style.

Venice was especially known for its beautiful girandole mirrors, which remained among, if not the, finest in Europe.

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Venice is known for its ornate glass-work, known as Venetian glass, which is world-renowned for being colourful, elaborate, and skilfully made.

Carnival of Venice is held annually in the city, It lasts for around two weeks and ends on Shrove Tuesday.

Venice Biennale is one of the most important events in the arts calendar.

The Venetian state – i e, the medieval Republic of Venice – was often popularly called the "Republic of Music", and an anonymous Frenchman of the 17th century is said to have remarked that "In every home, someone is playing a musical instrument or singing.

Venice was the early center of music printing; Ottaviano Petrucci began publishing music almost as soon as this technology was available, and his publishing enterprise helped to attract composers from all over Europe, especially from France and Flanders.

Venice was the home of many noted composers during the baroque period, such as Antonio Vivaldi, Ippolito Ciera, Giovanni Picchi, and Girolamo Dalla Casa, to name but a few.

Venice is the home of numerous symphony orchestras such as, the Orchestra della Fenice, Rondo Veneziano, Interpreti Veneziani, and Venice Baroque Orchestra.

Fulvio Roiter was the pioneer in artistic photography in Venice, followed by a number of photographers whose works are often reproduced on postcards, thus reaching a widest international popular exposure.

Venice is not known for a peculiar cuisine of its own: it combines local traditions with influences stemming from age-old contacts with distant countries.

Today, Venice is a major fashion and shopping centre; not as important as Milan, Florence, and Rome, but on a par with Verona, Turin, Vicenza, Naples, and Genoa.

In 2013, Venice announced that it wants to end the sister city relationship with St Petersburg in opposition to laws Russia had passed against homosexuals and those who support gay rights.