In all of the photos I have seen of Venice, I don’t remember ever seeing someone swimming in the canals or bays.
I know it can get pretty hot in Italy in the summertime… is the water really that polluted? And if it is a water quality issue why can’t/don’t they clean it up? Are there nice nearby beaches that the locals flock to when it gets warm?
Venice is an island in a shallow lagoon separated from the Adriatic Sea by some narrow barrier islands. The “real” sea is about a mile away, with plenty of beachfront.
I’m not sure how polluted Venice Bay is, although I recall hearing that it’s “dirty.”
Plumbing is problematic when your cities watertable is street level. As a result, sewedge goes directly into the bottom of the canals.
There actually has been an attempt to clean up the canals over the last few decades, with the results that they aren’t noticably smelly anymore (at least, I didn’t notice a smell). But you still wouldn’t want to swim in them.
The sewer system is the main reason why swimming in the Venice canals is not advised.
Venice does have one of the most famous resort beaches in the world, the Lido, which is on a separate island across the lagoon from the main parts of the city.
I have been to Venice a couple of times and I almost barfed when I read your question. I love the city but that is one disgusting thought. The canals really do function as open sewers and they smell. I suppose you could swim in the more open water leading to the Adriatic if you really insisted on it but there is a lot of boat traffic so it wouldn’t be safe and the water there is still rather murky as well.
Everyone says that, but I’ve been to Venice a few times, including in high summer (August), and have never noticed any unpleasant smell from the canals, with the exception of a few rather stagnant “back street” waterways. It’s one of the great myths of travel.
You wouldn’t want to swim in them though. They are very murky and also extremely busy with water traffic. Swimming across a main canal in Venice would be like wandering across a main street in New York, and would get you just as much verbal abuse, even if you weren’t run down.
And yes, the Lido is where Venetians go to swim. To this day, open-air swimming pools in the UK are known as lidos.
I suppose for you, in particular, this is an important practical issue, if you are planning to visit. 
I think its mainly dated. I’ve noticed people who have visited in the last decade or two are much less likely to mention the smell. And probably not coincidentally, there was a campaign to drain and clean out the canals in the mid-90’s, which disposed of the build-up. And presumably (or at least one would hope) the use and quality of septic tanks has gotten better with time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were one or two crazy guys each year who would imitate Lord Byron by swimming in the Grand Canal.
Thanks everyone. That makes perfect sense, especially given the age of the city and no, I’m not planning to visit Venice anytime soon… it was just a question I had always wondered about.
I used to travel to Hong Kong regularly on business and the locals wouldn’t dream of swimming in that harbor. If the pollution didn’t get you the boat traffic certainly would… but I don’t remember it being particularly smelly. Of course there’s a lot more water there to dilute things.
I used to drive out to Stanley sometimes, on the opposite side of the island, to check out the beach, but it really wasn’t much of a beach and I never saw anyone swimming there.
I have never been to Hong Kong but the thing to realize about Venice is that it is really small and it does not have roads. It is not a typical city by any stretch of the imagination. The canals are the roads. It is basically just a bunch of extremely old (and beautiful) structures built on a series of hundreds of islands (some of those are only a few or tens of meters apart).
The whole city is like an labyrinth and it is almost impossible not to get lost. I don’t think there is any other place like it in the world. Most of the canals have multi-story buildings built close to the edge on both sides and foot bridges that enable passage from one side to the other. It is still a functioning city too and not just a bizarre amusement park. Stuff gets into the canals every day from many sources no matter how much they can try to clean them up. I was walking along one once when someone in the building directly overhead dumped a bucket of seafood entrails into the canal or at least tried to. The remains of a Cuttlefish (ink producing sea animals related to squid and used in Venetian cuisine) fell right at my feet and some made it into the canal while the rest just splattered across my pants.
You would have to go there (highly recommended) to understand why this sounds like a bizarre question. There is water, water everywhere but not anywhere to swim at least not safely.
BTW, when I made the comment about the smell, I didn’t mean that the canals literally reeked. I have been there in the summer too. The smell was distinctive because it is very old city directly on swampy land with canals. However, it is pretty obvious that you shouldn’t put on a bathing suit and dive right in because it isn’t a hotel swimming pool or a Caribbean beach.
If you want to swim in the Adriatic, you should go to Croatia. adriatic sea croatia beaches - Google Search
It was built on a swamp, and swamp water is basically sewer water.
I’ve always wondered about how Venice recovers from when it floods, it seems that it happens often enough that the clean up should be routine.
The whole city of Venice is sinking and has a few inches of standing water in lots of places routinely with higher surges that are still fairly common. Some of that has been going on for centuries and it is still there but that is what you get for building on swampy, unstable land. They build and repair for inevitable. That includes putting down plywood on top of boards so that people can walk without getting too wet and sometime you just have to wade to get where you need to go. New Orleans has a similar problem. You just deal with it because they are both historical and tourist meccas that are also real cities and the people that live there do adjust so that routine flooding is just that and not devastating. A lot of it does get destroyed over time so that is why it is race against Global Warming to figure out a way to save both of them.
That sinking feeling in swamps is not necessarily caused by rising sea level or more recurring floods. It also has something to do with the amount of sediments being brought in by rivers emptying into the sea. Man-made structures like dams and cemented spillways reduce the normal amount of silt transported towards the mouth of the river (which is basically what forms a delta.) Without this regular sedimentation, the delta/swamp will accrete into the sea.
That is absolutely true but, in this case, it doesn’t matter who did what. The end result is the same. Rising sea levels or altered flow of sedimentation will cause cause the whole city of Venice to fail in an exponentially rising series of floods. You can go there now and see that it is obviously sinking and being taken over by the Adriatic (it is like a very slow motion Titanic). In fact, the rate of sinking may be up to five times higher than previously believed. Any rise in sea levels at all would greatly exacerbate that threat in a synergistic time-to-failure curve.
IIRC -
The original “Venice is sinking” was due to Mestre. So much groundwater was being pumped out of wells on the nearby mainland (for industrial use) that the aquifer layer was subsiding. This was stopped by 1960 and that sinking is no longer happening.
However, the ground has dropped enough that during spring and fall neap tides the water does come up to ground level, and in lower areas like St. Marks Square, maybe a foot deep. It’s quite something to see. I assume since most buildings in the area are brick and rock, damage is minimal. A foot of water in those areas is nothing new, and the temporary elevated pathways and keeping everything off the floor in the local stores prevents serious damage.
As mentioned - in 1999 and in 2001 I found no problem with smell, even in strong summer heat. (And I never saw any floaters) But, just like a working harbour, it’s messy. Lots of floating garbage and debris, and the water was an algae bright green, murky beyond about a foot. Plus, even the narrowest canals get motorboats and gondolas coming through, and the grand canal is like an expressway full of churning propellers. The rest of the lagoon is swamp - I saw one fellow way out in the middle of the lagoon, standing in about two feet of water, digging for clams I assume.
Swimming not advised.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I thought that almost all industry had moved to the mainland or other islands and that the old city was mostly a tourist attraction.
There isn’t much industry (if you mean heavy industry) in Venice itself as the buildings don’t really lend themselves to it. But plenty of people still live and work in the city itself, even if rising prices (due to second-home purchasers etc) have driven out a lot of locals. It’s definitely a functioning city, although obviously tourism is its mainstay.
Of course there is always the odd fool:
