VENICE (Venezia), a city and seaport of Italy, occupying one of the most remarkable sites in the world. At the head of the Adriatic, between the mountains and the sea, lies that part of the Lombard plain known as the Veneto. The whole of this plain has been formed by the debris swept down from the Alps by the rivers Po, Ticino, Oglio, Adda, Mincio, Adige, Brenta, Piave, Livenza, Tagliamento and Isonzo. The substratum of the plain is a bed of boulders, covered during the lapse of ages by a deposit of rich alluvial soil. The rivers when they debouch from the mountains assume an eastern trend in their effort to reach the sea. The result is that the plain is being gradually extended in an easterly direction, and cities like Ravenna, Adria and Aquileia, which were once seaports, lie now many miles inland. The en croachment of land on sea has been calculated at the rate of about three miles in a thousand years. A strong current sets round the head of the Adriatic from east to west. This current catches the silt brought down by the rivers and projects it in long banks, or lidi, parallel with the shore. In process of time some of these banks, as in the case of Venice, raised themselves above the level of the water and became the true shore-line, while behind them lay large lagoons, formed partly by the fresh water brought down by the rivers, partly by the salt-water tide which found its way in by the channels of the river mouths. On a group of these mud banks about the middle of the lagoon of Venice stands the city of Venice. The soil is an oozy mud which can only be made capable of carrying buildings by the artificial means of pile driving; there is no land fit for agriculture or the rearing of cattle ; the sole food supply is fish from the lagoon, and there is no drinking-water save such as could be stored from the rain fall.
The whole site of Venice is dominated by the existence of one great main canal, the Grand Canal, which, winding through the town in the shape of the let ter S, divides it into two equal parts. This great canal was prob ably at one time the bed of a river flowing into the lagoons near Mestre. The smaller canals all serve as arteries to the Grand Canal and their windings follow the lines of construction origi nally determined by the channels which traversed the islands of the lagoon. One other broad canal,
once the bed of the Brenta, divides the island of the Giudecca from the rest of the city and takes its name from that island. The alleys or calli number 2,327, with a total length of 894 m. ; the canals number 177 and measure 28 m. The ordinary Venetian house was built round a courtyard, and was one storey high ; on the roof was an open loggia for drying clothes ; in front, between the house and the water, ran the fondamenta or quay. The earliest churches were built with cemeteries for the dead ; and thus we find the nucleus of the city of Venice, little isolated groups of dwellings each on its separate islet, scattered, as Cassiodorus, secretary to Theodoric the Great, says, in a letter dated A.D. 523, like sea-birds' nests over the face of the waters. Some of the islets were then still uninhabited, overrun with a dense low growth which served as cover for game and even for wolves.