The Venetian Riviera Geography

The coast runs roughly 60 kilometres east from the mouth of the Venetian Lagoon to the Tagliamento, on flat, sandy ground formed by the rivers that reach the sea along it -- the Sile, Piave, Livenza and Tagliamento.

Cavallino-Treporti is the western end: a narrow peninsula, sea on one side and lagoon on the other, ending at Punta Sabbioni opposite the Lido of Venice.

Behind the built-up strip is reclaimed land -- most of this coast was marsh and lagoon until the drainage schemes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- and much of it lies barely above, and in places below, sea level.

Fragments of the original coast survive: the dune systems at Cavallino, the coastal pine woods behind Eraclea Mare and Bibione, and the Laguna del Mort, a small lagoon formed when the Piave shifted its mouth.

The beaches themselves are wide and shallow, and the sea shelves so gently that you can wade a long way out -- the single physical fact that made this coast a family destination.