When you think about Venice, most likely the first thing you get in mind is the diversity among bridges, narrow alleys, and canals.
In the end, we are talking about a place that was officially named "The Floating City" or "The City of Canals" which makes a lot of sense even if you know Venice only from pictures or from the internet, as I did for a long while.
In terms of numbers, there are 417 bridges in Venezia of which 72 are private, and 177 canals. The most famous one is the S-shaped Grand Canal which divided the city in two and which created a lot of controversy when the bridges over this one were raised, but I think we can all agree that if those bridges weren't built to make the connection between San Marco and San Polo, most likely Venezia won't enjoy the same amount of tourists and the economic development it enjoyed for a while. But I've written more about that in one of my previous posts.
Equally to the beauty of the canals that I ended up taking a lot of pictures with even if they seem like being in the same place, as many challenges face those who are living on the flats located on the sides of the canals where the only way to get out of the house is by jumping in a boat that you will have to ride further in town even just to get some new food to cook at home or do the usual shopping.
Basically, anything a normal person does with a car in any other part of the globe, but where in Venice is needed a boat for those activities.
Though, as interesting as this kind of lifestyle seems from the outside, I'm pretty sure it's very hard and not everyone would be able to deal with one of these especially since it's well known that Venice sinks a few more millimeters each year.
I know that 'millimeters' doesn't sound like a lot, but considering all the global warming that makes us all face new and unexpected situations, you never know when those millimeters will turn into a complete disaster. This might also be the way of thinking of many locals of Venice since a fairly recent statistic shows that the population of the city decreased to half in just the last 50 years, which is a lot.
There are also rumors that Venice might turn into a complete ghost town by 2030, where the only people you will see on the streets will be tourists. But until we see what actually happens with this city that honestly I hope will never die, here are a few more pictures with hidden canals of Venice which have nothing to do with the most famous one that enjoys a lot more audience from the tourists, but which looks stunning too.
I don't know about you, but only by looking at the last picture, I feel the pressure of claustrophobia on my shoulders, lol! And I never had problems with this one, but I can't imagine how it looks like to always have to make your way through this kind of narrow places with a boat. Perhaps the locals are already used to this, but still... looks pretty uncomfortable and definitely requires a lot of skill.
Another thing that I absolutely loved about Venice during my walks in town, was those random alleys and paths separated from the main ones which literally came with a completely new mood and energy from what I was just seeing.
A good example is the brick wall that surrounded some normal looking buildings but which felt different because of the palm trees that gave me a quick feeling of Barcelona... and Spain in general, where seeing this kind of tree is very common.
Another good example is this kind of alley which might seem a lot larger in the picture from above (sorry about the poor quality), but which represented a common path between buildings to quickly cross neighborhoods and make it faster to a specific destination. Most likely they are some sort of shortcuts that are only known by the locals.
But it's incredible how something that is common in a place out there might represent a rare thing in other parts of the globe. For example, there is a fairly narrow street in Brasov (Romania) that represents an actual point of interest for tourists, and the same in Prague (Czechia). Just imagine how it would look like to have all these narrow streets marked as points of interest in Venice, lol.
Funny or not, all these alleys represent a genuine bliss when you want to reach some places faster than you would do by surrounding a whole chain of buildings until you make it to the other side. And not for a few times we blamed our GPS for showing that we had to make it to the left or right in a place that at first seemed connected with other buildings, but which was actually represented by all these narrow paths that saved a lot of time that we ended up using to see more of the beauty of Venice.
More articles from Venice:
SEE YOU IN THE NEXT TRIP! 🗾
Gabriela Travels is the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences. At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe. Additonally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (260+ articles written on this field), but also abording other topics as well, like game reviews, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 550+ blog posts. Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, editing, cooking, and doing various sports activities.
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