Villavicencio vs Dolo

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Villavicencio (Spanish pronunciation: [biʎaβiˈsensjo]) is a city and municipality in Colombia. Capital of Meta Department, it was founded on April 6, 1840. The city had an urban population of approximately 531,275 inhabitants in 2018. The city is located at 4°08'N, 73°40'W, 75 km (about 45 mi) southeast of the Colombian capital city of Bogotá (DC) by the Guatiquía River. It is the most important commercial center in the Llanos Orientales (Eastern plains). It has a warm and humid climate, with average daily temperatures ranging from 21 °C to 30 °C.2 It is affectionately called "Villavo" la bella. Lying in a rural zone of tropical climate, Villavicencio is on the great Colombian-Venezuelan plain called the Llanos, which is situated to the east of the Andes mountains.

Villavicencio is also called "La Puerta al Llano", or "The Gateway to the Plains", due to its location on the historical path from the Colombian interior to the vast savannas that lie between the Andes range and the Amazon rainforest. Villavicencio's proximity to huge mountains and great plains make the city an example of Colombia's geodiversity. Because it is located in the foothills of the Andes, the morning and evening breezes cool the city, which is very hot for most of the day.

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