Lagune von Venedig

The Venetian Lagoon is an enclosed bay of the Adriatic Sea, in northern Italy, in which the city of Venice is situated. Its name in the Italian and Venetian languages, ''—cognate of Latin lacus'', "lake"—has provided the international name for an enclosed, shallow embayment of salt water, a lagoon.LocationThe Venetian Lagoon stretches from the River Sile in the north to the Brenta in the south, with a surface area of around 550km2. It is around 8% land, including Venice itself and many smaller islands. About 11% is permanently covered by open water, or canal, as the network of dredged channels are called, while around 80% consists of mud flats, tidal shallows and salt marshes. The lagoon is the largest wetland in the Mediterranean Basin.It is connected to the Adriatic Sea by three inlets: Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia. Sited at the end of a largely enclosed sea, the lagoon is subject to high variations in water level, the most extreme being the spring tides known as the '''' (Italian for "high water"), which regularly flood much of Venice.