Photo Tour: Venice of America

Venice just cannot be quite separated from the image of canals-lined-with-buildings-on-either-side and spotted with gondolas, can it? Did you know that there’s a Venice in California, too? And that it is not without its own canals? This Venice of America, as it is also known, is a replication of the original Venice in Italy.

Venice, California, a few miles west of Los Angeles was once meant to bring in some resort-style living to Southern California. Abbot Kinney, the name behind the project brought some land south of Santa Monica and drained the marsh there with plans to build rows of houses beside some canals. 

And it was done. The result: California had its own Venice.

The Canals of the Venice of America

That was in the 1900s. The area christened Venice went through several changes since then. However, what is now known as the Venice Canal Historic District still stands as a symbol of what the architect of Venice wanted it to be — the Venice of America. It is a residential neighbourhood. And a very affluent one at that – a block of multimillion-dollar homes with Venice’s canals in their front yard: with water, canoes, ducks and all.

Are the canals of Venice, CA open to public?

The good news is: Yes! The Canal District is open to visitors. There are walkways along the canals and in between the rows of houses that line the canals. The residential area here makes for a very pleasant stroll. The walkways run the length and breadth of the canals and there are cute little bridges running across them too. The white bridges are also open to visitors.

One Saturday afternoon, we ambled those paths along the canals and gazed at the homes, the calm waters of the canals in their front yards and the canoes that added colour to the scene. The homes here were also something to look at. Built in different styles, each one seemed to have a character of it own.

How to get to the Venice of California

Since you cannot drive around the canal district, you might find it tricky to get yourself to the area. Let me tell you what we did.

We set out navigation to ‘Venice Canals’ and drove towards the canal district. You can do the same. It gets you as close to the area as possible.

When you are almost there, you will see signs that say that the roads through the canals are only open to the residents. (Remember, the area is open to pedestrian traffic, alone ). That’s when you look into your maps again and pick the closest public parking. There are several public parking facilities in the periphery of the canals. Some of them have valet parking too. 

We parked near Pacific Avenue and Venice Way (near the Venice sign) and it was an easy walk to the Canals from there. It had valet parking too. There was another parking on the other side of the road too. And one closer to the canals. 

I’d like to add that even though we were there on a weekend, the parking areas and the streets were not crammed. And the visitors seemed to be pleasant too. Most of all, it felt so good to see that tourists were respectful of the residents of the canal district. Everybody seemed to respect personal spaces and there wasn’t a lot of noise in the air. 🙂

PS: The area did seem to allow pets. (I’m pretty sure they need to be on leashes, though.)

You might also like :
The Venetian, Las Vegas
The Venetian, Capitola

Coming soon on Tipsy from the TRIP
Venice Beach
Street Art from Venice, CA.

Linking to Our World Tuesday

For pictures from the road, Like/Follow Tipsy From The TRIP on  Facebook.
 Come, Trip with us.