It’s around 8 pm and the temperature’s around 40 degrees F, yet the streets are full of potential buyers for Venice’s local merchants.  What’s the secret?

Traffic.  This bridge, the famous Rialto, is one of only three in Venice, and they’re already about a half mile walk apart.  Adding the fact that this is the central bridge, that’s a lot of foot traffic.  The genius is in lining the bridge with merchants to take advantage of it, both established storefronts and temporary

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I can see why hundreds of neighboring residents stream into historic Venice through the one transit-oriented end of town that connects hordes of buses and cars…

You can literally stand in the streets of Venice carrying a beer or rum & coke, chatting it up with friends when it gets either too loud, crowded or hot inside - which is exactly what a group of us did one Saturday night (image above).

The bars oriented to the younger set are clustered, so there’s no lack of energy permeating the

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Italians in the second millennium were all about socializing.  Not only does the city have a grand piazza upon where city-wide events, announcements and demonstrations took place, but every neighborhood had one, two or three of them for their own purposes as well.  In fact, the neighborhood piazza has its own name - the campo, or campi for plural.

There were probably fifty to sixty campi in Venice alone - the piazza capital of Italy.  Of course it has its grand piazza, the famous Piazza San

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It’s good to be back from my place-making tour of Italy’s finest cities, and it was great to stroll through some of the most inspiring piazzas, streets and third places in the world.

Here are some of the highlights:

- Venice (Venezia) is a must-see.  Not only is the entire historic city on an island (a medieval Manhattan if you will), but there are absolutely no cars.  There were dozens upon dozens of piazzas in Venice, and despite freezing temperatures, it still attracted musicians and

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