Lido di Jesolo Historical Timeline

Origins

The lagoon here held the early medieval settlement of Equilio, a rival of the rising Venice and a centre of the lagoon world before it consolidated. It declined as its waters silted, and the population moved inland.

Turning points

For centuries the coast was marsh and sandbar rather than settlement. The Piave front of 1917-18 reached this shore, and reclamation through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries drained the land behind the beach and made it habitable.

Influential people

Beach tourism began in earnest in the 1950s and 1960s, and the modern town was built quickly and almost entirely from scratch.

Cultural evolution

Jesolo grew into a mass-market destination for Italian, German and Austrian families, and later added a nightlife economy that runs alongside the family one.

Present-day significance

It now takes millions of overnight stays a year, and in recent decades has added a small skyline of contemporary residential towers -- unusual on a coast otherwise built to four or five storeys.