Page 24 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Venice & The Veneto

22  INTRODUCING VENICE AND THE VENE T O

life into Venice entails reconverting former
industrial sites – the abattoir and the
cotton mill have become university
premises, while a former flour mill has been
transformed into a convention centre.
The Industrious North
The creativity and industry of the peo ple
of the Veneto contradict all the clichés
about the irrationality and indo lence of
A canal in Mestre, an urban region in Venice beyond the lagoon the Italian character. For a tiny area, with
a population of 4.5 million, the Veneto
In 1997 the population of the city was is remarkably productive. Many world-
68,600 (compared with 150,000 in 1950), renowned companies have manufacturing
but in 2001 the numbers rose for the first bases in the area, from Jacuzzi Europe and
time since the 1950s. The average age of Zanussi, to Benetton, Olivetti and Iveco
the Venetian population is nearly 50. One Ford. As a result, poverty is rare, and the
reason the city shuts down so early at region has progressed from its prewar
night is that the waiters, cooks and shop agricultural base to a modern manufac-
assistants all have to catch the last train turing and distribution economy.
home across the causeway to Mestre. Unencumbered by the rest of Italy, the
Mestre, by contrast, is a bustling city three northern regions of Piedmont,
of 180,000 inhabitants, with a busy oil Lombardy and Veneto alone would
terminal and an expanding industrial base, qualify for membership of the G10 group
as well as some of the liveliest discos in of the world’s richest nations, a fact
Italy. Governed by the same mayor and exploited by the region’s politicians in
city council, Mestre and Venice have been separatist calls for independence from
described as the ugli est city in the world Rome. Coldshouldering the rest of the
married to the most beautiful. Yet Mestre, Italian peninsula, the Veneto looks east to
founded by Venetians who foresaw a day Slovenia for an example of a small state that
when development land would run out has achieved independence, and north to
in the lagoon, is simply an extension of Germany as a model of political federalism
the same entrepreneurial spirit that and sound economic management.
characterized mercantile Venice in her Despite the ferocity of battles fought
heyday, a spirit that is now typical of the against them down the ages, the people
region as a whole. One move to inject new in the north of the Veneto have a close

Visitors at a craft market in Piazza Erminio Ferretto, Mestre

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