The little town in north of Netherlands is commonly referred to by local residents as the Venice of Netherlands.  Unlike Venice in Italy with old tall buildings built right to the waters edge, Giethoorn is a small village with mostly small houses and churches built 30 to 40 feet back from the canal.  The village sees most of it's water traffic during the summer months when the local campgrounds and trailer parks are booked solid.  People enjoy cruising the one way direction canals in small motor boats which eventually take you out to the lake.

During our visit we were the only ones there.  We met a few people doing maintenance on their property from their own platform boats but otherwise the day was quiet.  Take a couple hours and enjoy this little village that was first settled about 800 years ago.  Rent a boat like we did at www.smitgithoorn.nl.

The remains of the most famous Roman Villa of Casale are preserved 5km southwest of Piazza Armerina, in a little valley, on the left bank of the river Gela.  The villa was explored from the end of the nineteenth century, but the systematic excavations began only in the 1950s.  It was subsequently restored and since 1960 has been protected by a system of roofs.  The results of stratigraphical sondages in 1971 date it to an age of Constantine (303 -337 AD), a difficult and crucial period in Antiquity.  The Villa’s mosaics are the largest and richest Late Roman mosaic complexes so far known.  They were laid under the supervision of craftsmen almost certainly based in Carthage, in North Africa, that at the time was the economically and culturally the most developed region of the Western Roman Empire.