The Lady behind The Mask

Centuries ago, Venice was a powerful, majestic and innovative maritime republic that ruled the high seas for more than a millennium. She was a leader in trade between Europe and the Orient, and bridged the social, political and cultural divide between the two geographies.

Today, La Serenissima (The Most Serene) is world renowned for her many canals and postcard-perfect scenes, and, most importantly, her ability to take your breath away no matter how many times you visit.

If you’ve only seen Venice from afar, as the backdrop in a Hollywood movie or as part of the storyline in a fast-paced, edge-of-your seat thriller novel (think Inferno by Dan Brown), she’s more hypnotic than you could ever imagine. 

Hiding behind a Carnevale mask, she’s alluring, captivating and mysterious.

Built entirely over water, Venezia sits atop an archipelago of 118 small islands in a shallow lagoon of the Veneto region of northeastern Italy that empties into the Adriatic Sea.

She’s separated by an assortment of canals, like the Grand Canal (called Canalasso in the Venetian dialect) — the doge of La Serenissima‘s waterways that slithers through the city like a giant S-shaped serpent — smaller ones called a rio that merge into the bona fide ones, and the narrowest and shortest of canals called a riello.

It’s no wonder that Venice is also known as the City of Canals.

And, La Serenissima‘s connected by more than 400 bridges, some architectural masterpieces, all negotiated free of charge on foot. Of course, you can float around Venice, too: economically via traghetti (two oar gondolas) and vaporetti (public ferries), or expensively via gondolas (with or without a musical serenade) and private motoscafi (motor boat taxis).

For complete information on the province of Venice, including Carnevale 2017, visit the official tourism website, TurismoVenezia.

©The Palladian Traveler

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