Chioggia Culture

Fishing is the identity. The fleet, the wholesale market and the boatyards employ the town, and the vocabulary, the calendar and the food all follow from it. The retail market beside the Vena is where this is most visible.

The dialect, chiozzotto, is markedly different from Venetian and locals are conscious of it. Goldoni's Le baruffe chiozzotte was written in it in 1762 and is still performed.

The food is lagoon and Adriatic cooking without Venetian refinement: bigoli in salsa, cuttlefish, razor clams, grilled fish, and the radicchio and Chioggia beetroot -- the striped one -- grown on the reclaimed land behind the town.

Sottomarina has its own quite separate culture, that of the twentieth-century Italian seaside holiday: rows of umbrellas, family-run bagni, and the same families returning each August for generations.