How much of Italy is surrounded by a lot of water?

Question

I don't know much about Italy. However, everytime that I see photographs of Italy, I see the shopping districts surrounded by water-filled streets, that people have to always use boats to get around in. How much of Italy is surrounded by water like that? Are only the shopping areas surrounded by water, and are there many more areas of Italy that are not surrounded by those types of streets that are always full of water? If I am not mistaken, Italy might be the only country on Earth that has a shopping district/area that has streets that are always full of water. If I am wrong, what other places are like that? Furthermore, were those water-filled streets of Italy ever dry for a very long time? If yes, what caused those streets to become constantly flooded like that? Furthermore, do those streets ever become dry during any times of the year, or are they always filled with water, all year round of every year? Hopefully, some of you who live in Italy will answer these questions.

Answer 1

To my knowledge as an American who has never been there, I think those streets (known as canals) are mainly just in the city of Venice, but since it's a very well-known and popular city, one often sees pictures of it, whereas one might not see as many pics of other parts of Italy. I don't remember ever hearing of the canals going dry, in fact (not sure) I thought I heard the water level was rising.

From http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/venic...

Venice is actually a collection of many small islands connected by bridges in a lagoon that's separated from the Adriatic Sea by a strip of long, narrow barrier islands. When the tides are higher than normal, water surges through the lagoon inlets and floods the city, forcing people to walk around on raised catwalks set up for these occasions. On Nov. 4, 1966, the city was under a 1.94-meter tide (nearly six and a half feet), almost 1.5 meters over the normal tide, causing the worst flooding in recent history. In 1997, Venice flooded about 100 times.

Because flooding occurs more frequently now, the ground floors of buildings have been abandoned and many people have moved away. During medieval times, Venice was a thriving metropolis of 250,000 people; today the population is a mere 60,000.

"It's hard enough to live in Venice because of difficulties in mobility; there are no cars or trucks to move goods or drive you to the market. If, on top of that, businesses have to deal with an infrastructure under constant attack, it's understandable why it's difficult to maintain a viable, vibrant city," said Bras.

Floods usually occur between October and February, when winter storms bring lower atmospheric pressure and higher winds, leading to increased tide levels. But this year, it also flooded several times in June, when the city was unprepared. "It was a disaster, like snow removal in Boston in the summer," said Bras, who added that flooding tides of 1.4 meters (four and a half feet) were once rare, but now occur almost every year.

The increased flooding is caused by two things: the city is sinking and sea level is rising.

Answer 2

I'm Italian and then I can say that you've a wrong picture about Italy. The photos you've seen with water wherever were most likely tooken in Venice (unless they were showing the disastrous 1966 flood in Florence....) and they were probably the channels then the real streets. However even if Italy is surrounded by waters (being a peninsula we have the sea on 3 of its 4 sides) we don't have other towns looking like Venice,with so much water. Our feet are as dry as yours.....!!!

I pass you here below one of the tons of links you could click on the Internet to revise yr totally wrong idea about Italy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy

Answer 3

My elementary geography tells me that most part of Italy was suurounded by water. This explained the fact that malaria was a common problem there. it was one of the great leaders(Cant remember his name) who sand-filled the area especially Milan before reasonable construction could be done. Thus the picture today is a mordern view.

Answer 4

Venice is built on the water. The streets there are always full of water (they are more like canals). Most of Italy looks like everywhere else.