How Lido di Jesolo was built and evolved over time

The remarkable thing about Jesolo is the ground. In Roman times the lagoon extended over the area the town now occupies, with islands in it — the largest called Equilium. What is now fifteen kilometres of beach and hotels is water that silted, was drained and was built on.

That history shows in what is and is not here. There is no old centre along the shore because there was no shore to build one on; the resort is twentieth-century throughout, laid out in long straight lines parallel to the sea. The medieval fabric that does survive is inland at the Antiche Mura site, on ground that was an island when the rest was lagoon.