Every Venetophile worth their salt knows there are more than four hundred bridges in Venice crisscrossing the city's labyrinth of scenic canals. Let me say that again: FOUR HUNDRED BRIDGES. Stone ones, brick ones, old ones, new ones.
For tourists who visit Venice every watercourse is a Canal. But this is not correct. Indeed, there are less than a dozen Canals in Venice, all the others are actually Rios. The real Canals are in fact only the Grand Canal, the Cannaregio Canal, the Giudecca Canal and then some streams outside the city where the track is limited by marker poles, called brìcole, or others that have been incorporated in the course of landfill interventions over time. Canals are all navigable, whereas Rios are not necessarily always so. The Grand Canal flows through the city splitting it in two parts, and flows into St, Mark’s Basin; the Cannaregio Canal is a waterway connection between the Grand Canal and the northern area of the city; the Giudecca Canal separates the island of the same name by Dorsoduro district.