Venice is an island, a pedestrian city. Cars, buses and motorcycles cannot enter the city - even though some cyclists try it! - and in Venice you will move only on foot or by boat! Built on the waters of the lagoon, Venice rises on an archipelago of 118 islands crossed by 150 canals and connected by more than 400 bridges and is connected to the mainland by a bridge of 4 Km. From the sky the city's urban form is similar to a big fish caught in the waters of its lagoon - just like a fish in his aquarium!
But the historic center of Venice occupy only a small area of the entire municipality, which covers a total of 41,317 hectares, of which 25,302 are covered by the lagoon. In addition to the historical center, which occupies only 800 acres, the territory of Venice involves a part of the lagoon, with its small and large islands and beach resorts of the coast of Venice, the Lido and Cavallino-Treporti, which enclose and separate the lagoon from the Adriatic Sea, spreading over approximately 2,186 hectares. The locations of the Venetian mainland, including the municipalities of Mestre, Marghera, Favaro Veneto, and Zelarino Chirignago, occupy a total area of 13,028 hectares.
Venice is a unique city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979 not only for the rich artistic heritage that tells its thousand years of history, but especially for its particular morphology, that witnessed the evolution of the penetration occurred over the centuries between human interventions and the relentless action of the nature.