威尼斯的英文介绍（200字内）

Venice
City (pop., 2001 prelim.: 266,181), capital of Veneto region, northern Italy.
Built on the lagoon of Venice, it encompasses some 118 islands, the whole 90-mi (145-km) perimeter of the lagoon, and two industrial mainland boroughs. Refugees from northern invasions of the mainland founded settlements in the 5th century AD that were built uniquely on islands as protection against raids. Venice was a vassal of the Byzantine Empire until the 10th century. Beginning with control of a trading route to the Levant, it emerged from the Fourth Crusade (1202–04) as ruler of a colonial empire which included Crete, Euboea, Cyclades, the Ionian Islands, and footholds in Morea and Epirus. In 1381 it defeated Genoa after a century-long struggle for commercial supremacy in the Levant and eastern Mediterranean. In the 15th century, with the acquisition of neighbouring regions, the Venetian Republic became an extensive Italian state. It gradually lost its eastern possessions to Ottoman