Caorle

Province: Venice · Region: Veneto · Population: 11,793 · Postal code: 30021

They call it the fishermen's little Venice: pastel lanes and squares, a Romanesque cathedral and the eleventh-century cylindrical bell tower — one of a kind — leaning just enough. Caorle is a beach resort that never stopped being a village: the boats genuinely come home, and the fish ends up in the centre's trattorias.

On the breakwater, the "Living Cliff" turns boulders into sculpture; the seafront walk ends at the Madonna dell'Angelo sanctuary. In the lagoon of the casoni fishing huts, loved by Hemingway, boats glide between silences: the Adriatic's other face.