What's the deal with Venice: was it a regular city and it flooded, or for some reason they built over water?

Question

What's the deal with Venice: was it a regular city and it flooded, or for some reason they built over water?

Answer 1

they built it over water. i guess they wanted attention and as you can see they got it.

Answer 2

Venice was built in a remote swamp by people fleeing from the Lombards in 600-700AD (maybe even earlier).  They built a village on an island where the Rialto markets are.  The village grew, more building took place until, by the 15th century, it developed into the city we know today.  

The city was never built over water, but on around 117 islands, but many canals have, in recent times, been filled in to provide more building space.

Answer 3

I can tell you the truth. it was a "regular city", but one sad day somebody forgot to turn the tap off!

Answer 4

What Zafir says is true. In fact Longobards (a barbarian population) could not get through the slimy  bottom of the Venetian lagoon with their boats. So people who were hiding in this part of Italy were safe from invasion, and then decided to stay and build a city in there.

Yes, Venice is not over water, but built on typical islands called "barene", which have in some points some special mud you can build on safely. The pavements in Venice are supported by some poles pushed into the mud, upon which the pavements and then everything else is built.

The parts of Venice that are been covered with soil are those ones called "rio terrà" with "terrà" meaning "interrato", that is "covered with soil".

Anyhow, the canals Venice has now, mainly are the ones it had at first. They were and they are the canals that originally passed between a 'barena' and another. Canals are not much deep, as I said.

Oh, another trivia: we don't have a proper sawage system!

Hope this clears things... Ciao!