First you should note that house numbering is the system of giving a unique number to each building in a street or area, with the intention of making it easier to locate a particular building. In North America we have perfected this system to a fine art. City planners with no imagination have given us such addresses as 100 57th Street East and 200 A Street. Italian city planners in Venice and Florence don’t lack imagination. In Venice houses are numbered within districts, six of them called sestieri. Within the sestiere each building is numbered in one long consecutive sequence. Venice's random and informal street names are not officially part of an address, although many businesses will helpfully provide one. So there you are. I defy you to try to find Canneregio 5706 without a street name. This is one of the reasons most (every) visitor to Venice including us get lost. The following website sums it up nicely.
In Florence they include street names in their addresses. However you often will encounter two buildings with the same number on the same street. In Florence a building with a red number is a commerce while the same number but in black is a residence. Luckily we arrived in Florence by taxi and our driver knew the difference.
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| Street address in Venice (for what it's worth) |
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| Black address or red address? |
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