Discover Caorle Old Town

The centre is a tight grid of low two- and three-storey houses in plastered brick, built close together along narrow lanes for shelter from the sea wind.

The painted plaster is the defining feature: strong, flat, saturated colours, repainted regularly, with no attempt at architectural decoration beyond the colour itself.

Rio Terrà is the main axis, noticeably wider and straighter than the lanes around it because it follows a filled canal rather than a building line.

The cathedral and its round campanile stand at the centre of the grid and are by a long way the oldest and most substantial structures in it.

There is no monumental architecture here beyond the church. What makes the centre worth walking is the consistency of the ordinary fabric.