The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

h Gondolas
you might find fragments of a medieval
building embedded in the wall of a house
like fossil remains lodged in a cliff face.
The famously melancholic air of Venice
is in part a product of the discrepancy
between the grandeur of its history and
what the city has become. In the heyday
of the Venetian Republic, some 200,000
people lived in Venice – more than three
times its present population. Merchants
from Germany, Greece, Turkey and a
host of other countries maintained warehouses
here; transactions in the banks
and bazaars of the Rialto dictated the
value of commodities all over the continent;
in the dockyards of the Arsenale
the workforce was so vast that a warship
could be built and fitted out in a single
day; and the Piazza San Marco was
perpetually thronged with people here
to set up business deals or report to the
Republic’s government. Nowadays it’s no
longer a living metropolis but rather the
embodiment of a fabulous past, dependent
for its survival largely on the people
who come to marvel at its relics.
Fact file
• The Veneto is mountainous in
the north, where the Dolomites
extend towards the Austrian border,
and flat in the more extensive
southern part of the region, where
the Po river forms the boundary
with Emilia-Romagna. This fertile
plain is one of Italy’s major agricultural
zones, with wine production
being especially important: 20 percent
of all Italian DOC (Denominazione
di origine controllata) wine is
bottled in the Veneto.
• A little under 4.5 million people
live in the Veneto, which is divided
into seven regions, centred
on the cities of Venice (capital
of the Veneto), Belluno, Padua
(Padova), Rovigo, Treviso, Verona
and Vicenza. The historic core of
Venice, a major industrial centre
as recently as the start of the
twentieth century, is now home
to around 60,000 people – more
than 100,000 fewer than in 1945.
The neighbouring conurbation
of Mestre-Marghera today has a
population more than three times
that of Venice.
• Engineering is the most important
manufacturing sector of the
Veneto economy, but there are
numerous other large-scale industries
here: the province of Vicenza
is one of Europe’s largest leather-processing
areas, and is also
a major centre for goldsmithing;
80 percent of Italian eyewear and
70 percent of Italian sports shoes
are made in the Veneto; and local
firms such as Benetton, Diesel
and Stefanel are mainstays of
the Italian clothing industry. And
then, of course, there’s tourism.
Attracting one in six of all visitors
to the country, the Veneto is the
most popular of all Italy’s regions,
and Venice is its single most
popular city.
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