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World Europe Italy Veneto The Venetian Riviera Learn

The Venetian Riviera

Learn about The Venetian Riviera

A concise introduction to The Venetian Riviera, its geography, history and culture.

Introduction

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The Venetian Riviera is the long sandy coast running east from the Venetian Lagoon toward the Friuli border -- Cavallino-Treporti, Lido di Jesolo, Eraclea Mare, Caorle and Bibione -- and it is one of the largest concentrations of beach tourism in Europe.

This is not old Italy. Almost all of it was marsh until the twentieth century, drained and then built on from the 1950s, and it exists to do one thing: put several million people a year on a wide, shallow, safe beach.

Its particular advantage is Venice, half an hour away across the water from Punta Sabbioni -- which makes it the only place in Italy where a family beach holiday and St Mark's Square are the same trip.

Geography

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The Venetian Riviera is a low, sandy coastal strip east of the Venetian Lagoon, built on reclaimed marsh between the Sile, the Piave, the Livenza and the Tagliamento, with lagoons behind it and open Adriatic in front.

Read the full Geography guide →

History

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Lagoon settlements here predate Venice itself, but the modern Riviera is barely seventy years old: marshland drained in the twentieth century, fought over in both world wars, and built into a resort coast from the 1950s.

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Culture

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The Riviera's culture is a modern holiday culture -- campsites, beach clubs, water parks and evening promenades -- laid over an older lagoon world of fishing, market gardens and reclaimed farmland that still survives just behind it.

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How It Was Built

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The Riviera is twentieth-century resort building on reclaimed land: hotel blocks and campsites laid out in grids behind the beach, with a few Venetian fortifications and drainage works surviving from what came before.

Read the full How It Was Built guide →

Climate Patterns

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The Riviera has a mild Adriatic coastal climate -- hot humid summers cooled by sea breeze, damp cool winters -- with a swimming season from roughly June to September.

Read the full Climate Patterns guide →

← Back to The Venetian Riviera overview