"isolina_it's new Venice Page" a Venice Travel Page by isolina_it

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Venice (Venezia) is overcrowded with tourists for much of the year, its canals are polluted with grime and an increasing number of its citizens are choosing to leave for good. To top it all, this northeast Italian city on the Adriatic Sea is sinking – literally – as the combination of high tides and subsiding foundations puts Venice and its architectural treasures in increasing peril. These seemingly overwhelming problems may be enough to put people off visiting any other city but this is not just any other city. This is La Serenissima, the Divine Republic, a city unlike any other on the planet. This collection of 116 islands connected by 409 bridges is one of the most famous urban landscapes in the world. Well-worn images of palazzi-lined canals and masked gondoliers make Venice seem familiar even to those who have not been there but nothing prepares visitors for the first glorious sight of this city.
Emerging from Santa Lucia railway station or – even better – arriving by boat from the airport, the city unravels in a waterborne orgy of stunning architecture and chocolate-box domes. Here, even the fire engines and ambulances are boats in a world that is far removed from 21st-century Europe. The clogged roads that greet arrivals to most other European cities are replaced by a network of canals and lagoons that stretch off tantalisingly in all directions, just waiting to be explored. History is alive in Venice and when visitors ease through the morning mists, on an empty canal with grandiose buildings rising up on all sides, it is easy to slip back through to the centuries to the time of the Doges – the omnipotent rulers whose influence spread well beyond the Venetian lagoon. Venice then was an exotic melting pot of East and West, where traders and travellers, including Marco Polo, breezed in and out pedalling their silk and spices. Venice under the Doges was a land of unimaginable wealth – riches that were spent wisely in erecting some of Europe’s most memorable buildings, from the imposing Doges’ Palace itself, through to St Mark’s Square (famously described by Napoleon as the ‘drawing room of Europe’).

These halcyon days are long gone but stretching away from the tourist-logged highway between the Rialto and St Mark’s Square, Venice remains largely unchanged. Today, the threats to Venice come not from Mediterranean marauders and traditional maritime rivals like Genoa but from the very nature of its unique locale. The problems with sinking and pollution remain far from resolved and the population is decreasing as the city’s youth seeks out cheaper accommodation on the Italian mainland. There is a very real danger that Venice may degenerate into a kind of Disney-esque historical theme park, with few genuine Venetian inhabitants outside the tourist industry.

It is in the intense heat of a Mediterranean summer that Venice can get too much and the tourist congregations too large. Many savvy visitors are now choosing to turn up here out of season, in the colder months when swirls of mist and frosty winds descend on the canals. At this time, the beauty of this unique city, despite all of its problems, emerges in quintessential Venetian experiences, such as getting off a vaporetto at a random stop and ambling down a deserted canal,