Travel News

As summer sets in, tourists visiting Venice will find fountains feature unexpectedly high on this year's sightseeing tours as the city council aims to reduce waste in the world's biggest consumer of mineral water.

A new initiative to cut down on bottled water consumption, called "100% Public" (www.100X100pubblica.it), will be launched on Thursday, which is World Environment Day.

Tourists will be given an empty water bottle with the message "Don't throw me away, re-use me!" and a map indicating the 122 fountains flowing with water from the city's aqueducts, inviting them to quench their thirst directly from the source.

theage.com.au

Labels: Venice, water supply

All it takes is a handful of birdseed to transform any tourist visiting Venice's historic St. Mark's Square into a human perch for a fluttering mass of pushy pigeons.

But a Venetian pigeon's life may now be for the birds: A municipal ordinance banning people from feeding them in the square went into effect May 1.

iht.com

Labels: Venice

When it comes to Italy and canals, Venice has the glamour but Milan has the mileage: three times longer than the waterways of its tourist magnet neighbor.

But the 152 kilometers, or 94 miles, of historic shipping canals, construction of which the Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci helped oversee, are falling apart and experts are fighting to save one of Italy's lesser-known treasures.

iht.com

Labels: canals, Italy, milan, Venice

A court has allowed a female gondolier to paddle the canals of Venice, the first woman to do so in over a thousand years of the Venetian tradition.

iht.com

Labels: female, gondolier, Venice

Venice's first new bridge in more than 70 years will erected first in a hangar to reassure its engineers that its great weight will not cause the banks of the Grand Canal to sink.

independent.co.uk

Labels: bridge, Grand Canal, Venice