Historical Thursday: Venice, Italy

Hello Ladies!

Hope your Thursday is going splendidly I know mine will be awesome because that's the outlook I'm taking on it!

Anyway.. today I wanted to do another historical Thursday, I know I haven't done these in a while but maybe I'll do one every week again if you all dig it. Today's historical site is Venice, Italy. Seriously to die for. It has to be one of my favorite places on Earth hands down. I would love to live there. It's just so marvelously beautiful. We went on a family trip to Italy and then a cruise two summer ago and I cannot complain about that.

You will notice that I am a little chunkier in these pictures and it is why I don't have a lot of me photographed. :| Enjoy the sights anyway.

Here goes!

 Venice, "the floating city", is comprised of several small islands that are joined by bridges and separated by canals. You can walk pretty much anywhere around Venice but sometimes it is much easier to take a gondola and get to point B from A. There is no record of when the city was ACTUALLY founded but historians think it was somewhere around the 400s. It was founded by refugees from Roman cities nearby. It was always a place for art and trade around the Mediterranean after its population started to grow after the 800s. 

I love a city with good history and man does Venice have a long history. 

 So the city itself is built on top of Alder tree piles on which the foundation for the buildings were put.

Via

Something like these pictures above. I seriously tried my hardest to find some type of illustration to show you guys so you could visualize. I hope these two sort of helped. Basically, they lined up the wood and staked it into where the ground was a harder clay. From there they built the foundations on top of these stakes. You would think these wooden stakes would rot but no, since they are not exposed to oxygen they are protected. Another level of protection was made by making all the foundation of the houses marble, which is unaffected by the tides. They only have to worry when the tides go above a certain point and start to slosh against the weak brick. 

EVERYTHING in this city is marvelous. I have to go back sometime in my lifetime. Look at the architecture above! Tons of houses had little pots or window planters full of flowers. The walkways as you can see above weren't very wide at all but somehow everyone managed. Those are all my siblings by the way!

The only thing that I find quite sad is that the lagoon that the whole city sits on top of is polluted. The citizens did not treat the sewage before it was dumped in there, resulting in the condition it is in today. They have started to take measures and clean up their mess but it will take a good while until the water is at a normal level.

It was really neat being in a gondola and our gondolier sang! Not all of them sing like in the movies. I loved it. They also yell as you start to turn into the countless blind corners, so there are no accidents.

Hope you enjoyed the little stroll through Venice :)

With all my LOVE,

Pati