Venice is unique city - it is built on the sea. More precisely, on the number of islands. However, there are many buildings, that are built on the ground that is below the sea level. Before I visited Venice, I thought that there no usual streets, but only channels. Now I know that this is far from truth - there are usual streets as well. I cannot claim all of them are for pedestrians, but in my opinion the necessity of having a vehicle in Venice is arguable.
<p>Although city is full of channels, there are no problems with water in them. Channels are designed so that water is changed in them time-to-time, so there are no insects, as someone could expect. Any visitor is told by guide not only about the uniqueness of Venice's building traditions, but also about the magnificent history of Venice Republic with its revolutionary achievments in politics and economics.
<p>People settled on this archipelago (4 km to big Land and 2 km to Open Sea) in times of Barbarian invasion to Rome colonies, when refugees from these colonies fled there. Since then history of Venice became the most unique in Europe.
<p>Number of islands Venice stands on, reduced to 18 after 160 channels were dried and filled up with ground. By now, the main water road in Venice is Grand Channel, 3.8 km long and 3-70 meters wide, that divides city on 2 parts.
<p>If you want to locate some address in Venice, it will not be a simple task at all. Numeration s done by city parts, <i>sestieres</i>, not by streets. To make this task even more difficult, there are two kinds of numeration co-exist: old, with black numberpaltes with roman numbers; and new one, with arabic numbers on red numberplates.
<p><b>On the photo:</b> this is how Venice looks like from the boat that drives you to the city from the main land.
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