ORIGINS

Around the VI century A.D. the people of the terrferma, terrorized by the arrival of the Barbarian tribes from the north, sought refuge in the islands of the vast Veneto lagoon. The founding of the City of Venice dates back to the middle of the IX century when the administrative centre in Malamocco (now a small community on the Lido of Venice) was transferred to Rivo Alto (Rialto). This island was safer in that it was located in the centre of the lagoon and in the centre of an archipelago of small islands separated from each other by stretches of shallow water.

Gradually on each of these islands rose the first basic infrastructures: a campo (field) and a church, around which the local community converged. This is the reason for the dense distribution of churches, on which the pluricentric urban configuration of the city is based which by the 13th century had already ceased to expand as the single islands were enlarged so as to almost touch each other, seprated only by the narrow canals that we see today.

Venice is made up of more than a hundred islands, linked to each other by about four hundred bridges.