Venice vs Dolo

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Venice ( VEH-niss; Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsja] (listen); Venetian: Venesia or Venexia [veˈnɛsja]) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta and the Sile). In 2020, 258,685 people resided in the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 55,000 live in the historical city of Venice (centro storico). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC. The city was historically the capital of the Republic of Venice for a millennium and more, from 697 to 1797. It was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as an important center of commerce—especially silk, grain, and spice, and of art from the 13th century to the end of the 17th. The city-state of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center, emerging in the 9th century and reaching its greatest prominence in the 14th century. This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history.

After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Republic was annexed by the Austrian Empire, until it became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, following a referendum held as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence. Venice has been known as "La Dominante", "La Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", and "City of Canals". The lagoon and a part of the city are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Parts of Venice are renowned for the beauty of their settings, their architecture, and artwork. Venice is known for several important artistic movements—especially during the Renaissance period—has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi.Although the city is facing some challenges (including an excessive number of tourists and problems caused by pollution, tide peaks and cruise ships sailing too close to buildings), Venice remains a very popular tourist destination, a major cultural centre, and has been ranked many times the most beautiful city in the world. It has been described by the Times Online as one of Europe's most romantic cities and by The New York Times as "undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man".

Source: Wikipedia

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Dolo is a town and comune in the Metropolitan City of Venice, Veneto, Italy. It is connected by the SP26 provincial road and is one of the towns of the Riviera del Brenta. The growth of the town of Dolo is due to the gradual downsizing of the maritime power of Venice which was historically oriented towards Dalmatia, the Aegean Sea and the Middle East, occurred concurrently with the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic expansion and the new opening of navigation routes to the Americas. As a consequence Venice had to address inland its new commercial interests. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, documents testify to the existence of a village which, developing, gave rise to the economic importance of Dolo, always linked to the presence of its water mills collecting wheat from the nearby agricultural lands and then grinding the flour and embarking some into cargo boats pulled by horses along the banks of the Brenta Canal to the lagoon, from where they continued directly up to the Venice island settlement. Drinking water, too, was carried from Dolo to the center of Venice by cargo boats with big barrels filled directly from springs of the little river Seriola. The territory was affected by massive hydraulic works that led to the diversion of the main bed of the river Brenta through an artificial canal with new mouths along the southern sea approaches of the port of Chioggia, while just one part of the old Brenta still flows into the lagoon near the location of Fusina. The purpose of these megalithic hydraulic works was primarily to prevent the progressive flooding of the lagoon by the fresh water of the rivers and thus maintaining a high degree of salinity necessary to make possible the navigation and the very existence of Venice.

Until 1405 the jurisdiction of Dolo was under Padua, and then passed definitely under the dominion of Venice. A boat called the Burchiello transported Venetian noblemen directly to the Riviera sailing along the river Brenta, which was considered a natural extension of the Grand Canal, to spend summer in their sumptuous villas. The water level of the navigable river ways were controlled by a system of locks which are nowadays still visible in the center of Dolo, even if the evolution basin is now ground filled. An old marble table is still on display nearby to show toll tariffs for the transit in the locks for each type of boats coming from or going to Padua. Close to basin, there is a small shipyard, now dismissed, which was anciently used to repair and shelter the boats prior or after transiting the locks, while laboratories of caulk were housed all around. The origin of the name of Dolo is quite uncertain and controversial. One hypothesis asserts the name comes from the contraction of "Dandolo", surname of a noble Venetian family who gave a doge to the city of Venice and had properties here. From old maps it appears that the town’s name was sometimes reported as Dollo, which in archaic Italian language could also mean a tower which was probably demolished thereafter, unless it refers to the church’s belfry which is the highest in the region of Veneto, second only to St. Mark’s belfry in Venice. A lovely picture of the ancient locks of Dolo by the Venetian painter Canaletto can be seen in a London museum.

Source: Wikipedia