500px Photo ID: 85374641 - San Giorgio Maggiore visto dalla Riva degli Schiavoni

Daniela Balgera / 500px

Riva degli Schiavoni

Venice


Stretching east from San Marco, this broad waterfront avenue is one of the world’s great promenades. Schiavoni (literally ‘Slavs’) refers to the people from Dalmatia (the coastal region of present-day Croatia, which once made up a substantial chunk of the Venetian republic) who settled in this part of the city in medieval times.

For centuries, vessels would dock and disembark here, the waterfront a Babel of languages, as traders, dignitaries and sailors arrived from ports around the Mediterranean and beyond. Now it's liberally dotted with market stalls selling souvenir T-shirts, aprons printed with Michelangelo's David and mass-produced masks to visitors from even further afield.


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