Venice, Grand Canal Live Cam

Located in the very hearth of Venice, the Lisbona Hotel offers its guests the opportunity to be surrounded by the magical atmosphere of a thousand year old city which has remained unchnged over the centuries. Small and confortable, the Hotel - just a few steps from Piazza San Marco - is furnished and decorated with furniture and fabrics recallng the 18th century Venetian style. All the rooms overlook the romantic San Moisč canal, allowing the guest a suggestive view characteristic of this splendid city. They are equipped with refrigerator, safe, bath/shower, hair dryer, telephone and summer/winter air conditioning.

St. Mark's Square, the great lagoon, the gondolas on the Grand Canal, the Bridge of Sighs, the wild Carnival, the great architecture, the artistic masterpieces, the sumptuous palazzi, the magic of the narrow streets...

Handicraft in Murano and Burano - Murano is the capital of glass, whose working, known since the Roman period, has improved because of continuous contacts with Greek and Syrian merchants. This handicraft, carefully protected by the Republic, reached its pique during the 17th and 18th centuries when refined manufactured articles executed with secret techniques were handed down from father to son. Today there are about 260 firms that continuing this ancient tradition and co-operation of the industry with designers. Burano is famous for the art of lace. The Venetian creation blossomed during the 16th century, passing from "reticello" to the air stitch, a kind of lace that doesn't lean against any basic scaffolding. This paved the way for more perfect, complex and artistic laces. Once the Burano lace, with the round stitches in the bottom giving it its characteristic waving effect, was usually worked by noble ladies, nuns and girls. Today it is created by the lace-women who work along the calli in front of the fishermen's houses.

The basic structure of the city - The city develops vertically because of the lack of spaces. In Venice one reuses everything; the foundations of buildings, which remain the same for many centuries. This is a forced adaptation, due to the distance from the raw building materials. For this reason the city remains structurally similar to the one of the XVI century. Every urban element is influenced by its relationship with the watery essence and by its functional position in the historic, social and economic evolution of the city. This is the case of the campi and campielli, around which the life of the ancient villages was structured, of the canals and the rii (little canals) which are still today the citizens main network of watery 'roads', of the bridges and the salizzade (main paved streets), of the rughe (streets flanked on both sides by shops and houses), of the rami (little streets which branche off a main calle), and of the calli (the about 3000 streets through which the traffic stream develops). But also the residential (houses, palaces and convents), and commercial structures (markets and stores), schools, theatres, squeri (shipyards for the building of the famous gondolas) reveal in their shape the compromise between their functionality and the particular environment in which they were settled.

The islands of Venice - The city is divided into sestieri (the six districts): Cannaregio, San Marco and Castello on the left bank of Canal Grande, Santa Croce, San Polo and Dorsoduro on the right. The most inhabited areas are: Murano, Burano, Torcello, Pellestrina, San Pietro in Volta, Alberoni, Malamocco and Lido. Lido was famous in the XIX century because of the therapeutic properties of the seaside climate and its baths. Now it has become undoubtedly the seaside resort of Venice. Murano is an island dedicated almost entirely to glass-blowing. It is here that the famous, colorful, Venetian glass is produced since 1291. You can visit the furnaces and see a demonstration of the glass-blowing process, usually with free admission. Burano's main economy is still fishing even nowadays, but tourists come here for the famous Venetian-point lace. Traditionally, each woman specialized in a single stitch as seven of them worked together and alternated during its creation. There is also a lace museum. Torcello is a rustic and peaceful island, a day trip from Venice. Visitors who come to explore Torcello come to see Santa Maria Assunta, Venice's first cathedral, filled with magnificent mosaics.

The food - Venice with its 78,000 citizens has reduced itself into a small city. Near the social factors there are environmental problems which from decades are undermining at the root the survival of the city itself. Pollution and wave motion caused by motorboats are wearing away the structure upon which Venice rests. Moreover, there is the subsidence caused by the rising of the sea level and by the substantial extraction of water from the water- bearing strata by the mainland wells. To these phenomena one has to add modifications due to harbour works, which now allow a greater flow of water in the lagoon that cannot distribute in a homogeneous way because of the covering with earth of the sandbars. The flood in Venice depends on all of this. The flood concerns different zones of the city, especially during the months of November, December and February. Venetians, awakened by the sound of sirens, stand up well to the flood with wooden gangways which allow them the crossing of most of the critical points. Another typical presence in Venice is the fog ('caligo' in dialect) which for days envelops the entire city causing many problems to the navigation and forcing the population to long walks and an exhausting wait for the public transport.