Venice, Casino At Ca’ Noghera, 2009 will start the works for a new American-Style Casino as well as a luxury hotel.
In 1999 the first American-style Casino was born in our country. Venice Casino at Ca’ Noghera, which opened after the shutting down of the very famous one at the Lido, contains the best of American games, but it is located inside a building which had been restored for such use but not refined enough. This year the plan for the rearrangement of the whole area will start: it is a rearrangement that will certainly concern the gaming house too.
Within 2009 Tessera is starting works for a stadium with thirty-thousand covered seats and annexed shops, trade areas, restaurants and a brand-new Las Vegas-style casino as well as a hotel with at least 350 rooms. Such buildings will be connected by a bridge and the calls for bids for the assignment of the construction of the two edifices will be shortly assigned – the Mayor of Venice Massimo Cacciari has assured. Thanks to these interventions at last the new gaming house will be able to compete seriously with the one at Nova Gorica. The total maquillage of the area of Tessera envisages works on more than two million square metres of ground.
The Southern Lagoon, namely the ‘water park’ of Venice, is full of secrets that, for not a long time, everybody has been able to visit thanks to the new sailing service ‘ATN Laguna Sud’. This area, contained between the lagoon town and Chioggia, Lido islands, Pellestrina Isle and the Riviera del Brenta, still nowadays represents a coffer of biodiversities and it is furrowed by some not-to-miss itineraries for the lovers of bird-watching but also for those who want to discover Venice in a very original way.
The Venetian Palace still keeps the signs of its origin as warehouse and then both as residence of noblemen and of merchants. Each palace has got two entrances, one on the water from which the goods get in, called bank, and the other one, on the land, usually led into a courtyard with its own well in the centre, for water supply. Besides, it is bizarre the fact that a town surrounded by water had several problems related to drinkable water. Such problems were solved by means of specific wells which had to collect rain water and filter it. On the ground floor, next to the entrance hall (andron) there is often the mezzanine floor: its sides were divided into two halves along their height, and they were used as business offices by the merchant. The side rooms of the entrance hall, on the first floor or piano nobile, were used as the residence of the owner. In the end, the attic was usually inhabited by his servants and merchantmen.
Every year two million tourists stay at the hotels in Mestre-Venezia. If we make a quick calculation, then, nearly four tourists out of ten who decide to have a holiday in Venice sleep on the dry land. And the increase in such presences is constant: 20% more every year. Of course, it is a consequent tourism, that is relative to people who want to visit the wonderful lagoon town and do not want to spend too much. Moreover, at the end of the day, satisfied with Venice’s beauties, after coming back to their hotels, they are often interested in going round Mestre to look at the numerous shop windows and take the opportunity to do shopping in the fashion, and even to get lost inside the Shopping Centre Le Barche, beside along the town roads. And then, what about sitting down and drinking an aperitif in one of the various modern or retro fashion places in Ferretto Square and neighbouring areas?
Higher and higher and ready to run on the large international hubs when also the enlargement of this air terminal and the third runway will become real. SAVE, the company managing the Venetian Marco Polo Airport, on 27th December rewarded the seven millionth passenger in transit on the lagoon terminal in 2007: Jeanne Belhumeur, a French speaking Canadian woman from Montreal who has been living in Italy for five years and who was going leave and call at Paris in order, then, to fly to Canada. During the period January – November the traffic of passengers in Venice increased of 12% compared to the same period of the previous year, against a national average grow of 10,2% and a European one that in the period January – June was equal to 5,7%.
The City Notebook about Venice has come out, with its stone and water routes with young people from all over the world. It is the new Moleskine City Notebook about Venice, following the ones about New York, Boston, Paris, London, Barcelona, Berlin, etc… The Italian producing house of the most famous small notebook in the world, which was also used by Hemingway, Chatwin, Picasso, has enriched its new collection with new city notebook models which, besides its mere white pages to write one’s own travel notes, are endowed with useful information and the map of the Venetian city too.
The well-know phenomenon of high water regularly occurs in Venice above all in autumn and winter. It is caused by higher-than-average tides which, by getting into the lagoon through its three inlets, flood some parts of the town. The combination of three different natural phenomena results in such event: tides, low pressure, strong winds and heavy rainfalls. Such extraordinary high tides are due to the very characteristics of the Adriatic Sea ploughed by winds such as scirocco wind coming from Syria and bora from Hungary. These two winds respectively press the sea towards the lagoon and, at the same time, avoid the tide itself from flowing back into the sea.
Going on a tour by gondola through the canals of Venice is not cheap but it is surely very evocative.
The church can quite rightly be called “Tintoretto’s church”: this great artist spent most of his life in the surroundings, he was buried here and his teleri full of pathos transfigure the interior.
