10 Interesting Facts about Veneto

Reading one of these following facts about Veneto should be one of the best information if you want to take a holiday on your free time. If you love to travel around the world and want to spend your weekend somewhere quiet, then Veneto should be one of the best place to visit first. Veneto is one of the twenty regions of Italy. Its population is about five million, ranking fifth in Italy. The region’s capital and largest city is Venice. Veneto had been an independent state for more than a millennium. The Republic was not restored at the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars and was annexed by the Austrian Empire, until it was ceded to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence. To get to know more about it, here are some facts about Veneto you may like.

Facts about Veneto 1: Geography

Veneto is located in the north-east of Italy, bordering to the north Austria and the Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige, to the east the Italian region Friuli and the Adriatic sea, to the south the Italian region Emilia Romagna, to the west the Italian region Lombardy.

Facts about Veneto 2: Population and Official Language

The amount of population of Veneto is a bit less than 5 millions people. The name “Veneto” itself comes from the first tribes that settled down in the area: the Venetos. Since it’s part of Italy, the language that this country uses is Italian.

Facts about Veneto 3: Venetian Dialect

The Venetian dialect is widely spoken by people of any generation. Very often it is the real mother language, being the first language spoken inside families. Thus most Veneto people are bilingual. A tidbit: in the last decades parents have been tending to speak Italian to their children. It is therefore very common to hear adults speaking Venetian among them and Italian with their children.

Facts about Veneto 4: Wealth

The Republic of Venice, encompassing the Veneto mainland too, was for centuries one of the wealthiest powers of Europe. It became a very poor area after the fall of the Venice Republic in 1797, when it passed under the dominion of Austria and finally united with the Reign of Italy in 1866.

Facts about Veneto 5: Agriculture

Though its importance has been decreasing for the past 20–30 years, agriculture continues to play a significant role in the regional economy. The agricultural sector of Veneto is among the most productive in Italy. However, it is still characterised by an intensive use of labour rather than capital, due to the specialization in market gardening, fruit-growing and vine-growing throughout the plain and the foothills, requiring very much handicraft.

Facts about Veneto 6: Industry

In the last 30–40 years industrialization transformed the appearance of the landscape, especially in the plains. The regional industry is especially made of small and medium-sized businesses, which are active in several sectors: food products, wood and furniture, leather and footwear, textiles and clothing, gold jewelry, but also chemistry, metal-mechanics and electronics. This has led to the establishment of a strongly export-orientated system of industries.

Facts about Veneto 7: Tourism

Though being a heavily industrialized region, tourism is one of the main economic resources of Veneto. One-fifth of Italy’s foreign tourism gravitates towards Veneto, which is the first region in Italy in terms of tourist presence, attracting over 60 million visitors every year, and the second after Emilia Romagna in terms of hotel industry structures. The business volume of tourism in Veneto is estimated in 12 billion Euro.

Facts about Veneto 8: Art

The Middle Ages allowed the creation of monumental works such as the complex of churches on the island of Torcello, in the Venetian lagoon, with the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta based in 639, the bell tower erected in the 11th century and the adjacent Martyrium of Santa Fosca built around the 1100, important for their presence of mosaics.

Facts about Veneto 9: Education

Veneto hosts one of the oldest universities in the world, the University of Padua, founded in 1222. The OECD investigations show that school education achievements in North-Eastern Italy (whose population comes mainly from Veneto) are the highest in Italy. As of 2003 the university had approximately 65,000 students.

Facts about Veneto 10: Literature

Venetian literature is the corpus of literature in Venetian, the vernacular language of the region which roughly corresponding to Venice from the 12th century. The Venetian literature, after an initial period of splendour in the 16th century with the success of artists such as Ruzante, reaches its maximum zenith in the 18th century, thanks to its maximum exponent, dramatist Carlo Goldoni.

Hope you would find those Veneto facts interesting and useful for your reading.