44 Fun Facts About Venice

What holds up Venice's historic buildings?

Wooden piles were driven down below the water, where the wood is cut off from air, so it resists the rot that destroys exposed timber.

Venice's lagoon opens onto which sea?

The Adriatic Sea was 'married' by the doge each Ascension Day, when he threw a golden ring into it as a token of Venice's rule over the sea.

Venice's first lagoon settlers were Romans from nearby cities fleeing what?

Barbarian invasions, ending with the Lombards, drove them onto the islands, where a Byzantine duchy formed whose duke, the 'dux', became the doge.

Venice built the domed church of Santa Maria della Salute to give thanks for the end of what?

A plague killed 46,000 people in the city in 1630–31, and almost every work of art inside the church still refers to pestilence.

After conquering Venice in 1797, Napoleon handed the city to which power by the Treaty of Campo Formio?

Austria took the city, but in 1848 Venetians rose up, drove out the Austrians and briefly revived their republic under Daniele Manin.

Which crusade, diverted off course, sacked Constantinople in 1204 with the help of Venice's fleet?

The Fourth Crusade's loot included four bronze horses from Constantinople's Hippodrome; the originals are now kept inside St Mark's, with copies outside.

St Mark's body was smuggled to Venice from which city?

Alexandria's customs officers let the cargo pass because, legend says, the two Venetian merchants had covered the saint's body with pork.

Venice's 1516 Jewish Ghetto grew up beside what kind of works?

A foundry, 'getto' in Venetian, may have given the Ghetto its name, and the quarter was shut off from the city under Christian watchmen.

Venice's medieval glassmakers were ordered to move their furnaces to which island?

Murano got the glass furnaces because the Republic feared they would set the crowded city on fire.

The lagoon island of Burano is famous for which craft?

Lace from Burano had faded by the 19th century, until a lace school opened in 1872 and revived the craft.

What are Venice's historic districts, such as Cannaregio and Dorsoduro, called?

Sestieri comes from 'sesto', a sixth, because historic Venice is divided into six of these districts.

What are Venice's motorised waterbuses called?

Vaporetti means 'little steamers', a name kept from the steam-powered boats that first ran these public routes.

Which Venetian bridge did a rival architect predict would fall to ruin?

The Rialto Bridge still stands, while the earlier bridge on the same spot was destroyed and had to be rebuilt.

The Bridge of Sighs connects the Doge's Palace to what?

The New Prisons lay across the canal, and tradition has prisoners sighing at their last view of the outside world as they crossed.

Which Venetian adventurer escaped in 1756 from the lead-roofed cells of the Doge's Palace?

Giacomo Casanova had secretly been sentenced to five years, but after 15 months he broke out of his cell beneath the palace's lead-plated roof.

St Mark's Campanile in Venice is a reconstruction because the original did what?

Collapsed in 1902, and rather than leave the square open, the city chose to rebuild the bell tower exactly as it had been.

A remark usually attributed to Napoleon calls Piazza San Marco what?

The drawing room of Europe, as Napoleon supposedly called it, gained a new palace wing across its west end under French rule.

Why was Venice's Council of Ten created in 1310?

To judge plotters behind Bajamonte Tiepolo's failed conspiracy, it began as a temporary court but was later made permanent.

Which two gods' colossal statues crown the Giants' Staircase in Venice's Doge's Palace?

Mars and Neptune, carved by Sansovino, stand for Venice's power on land and at sea.

What does Venice's MOSE do against high tides?

Raises sea gates: its barriers rise at the lagoon inlets, but delays, cost overruns and scandals held back the first full test until July 2020.

Why did Venice begin to sink noticeably in the 20th century?

Artesian wells drew water for industry from beneath the lagoon, and that industrial pumping was later stopped.

In 1637, Venice's Teatro San Cassiano became the first theatre where paying audiences could see what?

Opera had been a private court spectacle, but San Cassiano opened it to a paying public, and many more Venetian opera theatres soon followed.

At Lepanto in 1571, Venice's galleys helped defeat which empire's fleet?

The Ottoman Empire lost the battle, yet in 1573 Venice made a separate peace with the Turks on loser's terms, and the Holy League broke up.

As of 2021, where did most residents of the comune of Venice live?

On the mainland, around Mestre, which took in a large exodus from the historic centre while the old city's population kept falling.

Marco Polo dictated the story of his travels while a prisoner of which rival city?

Genoa held him during its war with Venice, and his cellmate Rustichello wrote the stories down in Franco-Italian.

Vivaldi wrote many of his works for the all-female ensemble of which Venetian institution?

The Ospedale della Pieta's women and girls gave regular performances, and their fame attracted foreign visitors and patrons.

Titian's Assumption of the Virgin was painted for the high altar of which Venetian church?

Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari lost the painting to the Accademia gallery in the 19th century, but it returned to the high altar in 1919.

Which Shakespeare tragedy opens in Venice before the action moves to Cyprus?

Othello opens in Venice, whose senate sends its general to defend Cyprus, but a storm wrecks the enemy fleet before any battle is fought.

What is the top prize of the Venice Film Festival, the world's oldest film festival?

The Golden Lion went unawarded from 1969 to 1979, after the 1968 protests ended prize-giving, and returned only in 1980.

Which American collector bought a Venice palazzo in 1949 that now houses her museum?

Peggy Guggenheim made the palazzo her home, opened her collection there to the public, and her ashes now rest in its garden.

The 'Adagio in G minor', composed in 1958 by a musicologist, is credited to which Venetian Baroque composer?

Tomaso Albinoni's biographer, Remo Giazotto, published the piece, and whether he really built it on a surviving Albinoni fragment is still debated.

Which barrier island of Venice's lagoon hosts the Venice Film Festival?

The Lido, a fashionable seaside resort since the 19th century, gave English 'lido', a word for a beach resort or public bathing place.

In 1604 Venice introduced what is considered the first example of which tax?

A stamp tax: within decades Spain, the Spanish Netherlands and France had adopted similar duties.

Which book did the Christian printer Daniel Bomberg become the first to print complete, in Venice?

The Talmud came off the press of this Antwerp-born Christian, who hired rabbis and Jewish scholars to edit his Hebrew books.

Venice's Carnival ends on the eve of which Christian season?

Lent begins the next day, and the word carnival probably comes from Italian for 'removing meat', since the eating of meat stopped as the fast began.

By which honorific title is the Republic of Venice best known?

La Serenissima lasted until May 1797, when French arms brought the republic down and its Great Council met for the last time.

Where was the first Venice Biennale art exhibition staged in 1895?

The Giardini hosted it, and from 1907 participating countries began building their own national pavilions there.

The painter Jacopo Robusti was nicknamed Tintoretto, 'little dyer', because of what?

His father's trade was dyeing, and early biographers say Titian soon broke off the boy's apprenticeship in his studio.

Which two 18th-century painters are known for their panoramic view paintings, or vedute, of Venice?

Canaletto and Guardi painted Venice's vedute, and Canaletto's patron Joseph Smith, later British consul, sold his large collection of the views to King George III.

Which two 18th-century Venetian playwrights feuded over the future of Italian comedy?

Goldoni and Gozzi clashed, and Gozzi mocked his rival in The Love for Three Oranges, a fairy-tale play staged by a masked commedia troupe.

RAF crews bombing German ships in Venice in 1945 faced what fate if they hit the city?

Dismissal from service, or being 'bowler-hatted', gave Operation Bowler its name, and the raid hit German ships while the city escaped almost unharmed.

Which architect designed the glass-stepped bridge across Venice's Grand Canal that opened in 2008?

Santiago Calatrava's glass steps caused so many falls in the wet that Venice put up keep-off signs and began replacing them.

Questioned by the Inquisition in 1573 over his Last Supper, what did Paolo Veronese do?

Veronese renamed the painting after the tribunal objected to irreverent details at the holy supper, such as a jester and a servant with a nosebleed.

What first linked historic Venice to land in the 19th century?

Railway bridge: to clear space for the station at its end, the church of Santa Lucia was pulled down, and the saint's body was moved elsewhere.