Learn about Caorle

Caorle sits on the Adriatic between the Venetian Lagoon and the Tagliamento, on a low sandy coast with its own smaller lagoon immediately inland. The town occupies the point between two beaches; the wetland behind is what the land looked like before reclamation.

A Roman port and then an early bishopric -- its cathedral dates from 1038 -- Caorle spent centuries as a small Venetian fishing town before the drainage of the surrounding marshes and, from the 1960s, mass beach tourism transformed it.

Caorle has two cultures that barely meet: an old fishing town with a millennium-old cathedral and painted houses, and a modern Adriatic beach resort built for Italian and Austrian families. Both are genuine; they simply occupy different streets and different months.

Caorle is two towns built to different rules: a medieval fishing centre of narrow lanes, painted plaster and stone, and a twentieth-century seafront of hotels laid out in blocks behind the beach.

Caorle has a mild Adriatic coastal climate -- hot humid summers tempered by sea breeze, cool damp winters, and a swimming season running roughly June to September.