In Italy, Venice conjures up romantic visions of canals and gondolas. In Florida, the visions tend more to shark teeth.
This southwest Florida beach town is one of the best places in the world to find fossilized shark teeth. Tourists and residents alike comb area beaches for toothy treasures that wash up regularly. The city even dubs itself the “sharks’ tooth capital of the world” and hosts the annual Shark’s Tooth Festival.
But there’s more to Venice than marine dental discards.
Florida’s Venice may not have canals and gondolas, but it possesses an unusually rich cultural life, as well as a location and climate that attract thousands of visitors and new residents.
For a small city, Venice offers significantly greater cultural opportunities than one might expect.
The Venice Theater presents more than 400 performances a year on two stages, including Broadway musicals, contemporary drama and concerts. The 75-member Venice Symphony gives a winter series of pops and classical concerts, and the Venice Art Center presents exhibits and workshop classes for adults and children.
Venice also benefits from its proximity to Sarasota (about 20 miles north of here), the cultural center of Florida’s Gulf Coast. Sarasota has its own symphony, ballet and opera, as well as 40 theaters and 30 art galleries, including the world-famous Ringling Museum of Art.
Golf, sailing, kayaking and other outdoor doings are year-round activities here. Miles of beaches beckon, among them Paw Park, where even dogs can go for a swim. Venice Municipal Beach, among the busiest, lies conveniently at the edge of downtown. Shark-tooth seekers favor Caspersen Beach, the longest in Sarasota County.
Tampa, with its big-city services and facilities, is just an hour and a half away, and within 2 1/2 hours are such Florida playgrounds as Tampa’s Busch Gardens and Orlando’s Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World theme parks.
All of which makes Venice a happy locale for those who look for small-city ambience without big- city problems.
Circus’ winter home
Then there are lions, tigers and bears. No, this isn’t Oz, and the beasts aren’t roaming Venice today, but they were here for 32 years, from 1960 to 1992, when Venice was the winter home of the famous Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.
That’s part of the unusual history of Venice, which from its beginning in 1925 was destined to be different from other Florida cities.
Unlike most communities that arose helter-skelter in Florida during the 1920s boom, Venice was planned down to the last byway before the first spade of sand was turned. It even incorporated the then-little-employed concept of zoning to separate business property from residences.
That heritage makes Venice one of the most livable cities in Florida. Graceful palms outline Venice Avenue, many blocks of which are still lined with stately Mediterranean- style mansions of yesteryear. Downtown has grown and taken on modern airs, but archways and red-tile roofs still mark many 1920s-era buildings there — and some new structures even have reverted to that elegant northern Italian style of architecture.
While it’s long been a retirement haven for escapees from northern climes, Venice lately has taken on an edgy patina attractive to 20- and 30-somethings — new stores offering youthful clothing and home-decor fashions, dining spots serving contemporary dishes, and occasional less-traditional theater offerings such as “Reefer Madness” (a musical).
For that same age group — and other active folks — a 10-mile-long paved trail, the Legacy Trail, opened last year over the former railbed from Venice north to Sarasota. Another paved path, the recently built Venetian Waterway Park, straddles both sides of the Intracoastal Waterway.
A history of Venice, called “Venice Remembered,” is painted on a grouping of murals close to the downtown-end of the trail, which runs south all the way past the Venice Airport to Caspersen Beach.
That’s a good place to take a breather — and maybe discover a shark tooth or two.
The details
Venice Chamber of Commerce, 941-488-2236 or
.
