Germany's Venice Obsession
Multiple cities and towns have a district designated 'Little Venice' or 'New Venice' - Berlin has two.
My friend Joe at ZenKimchi wrote a post a few days ago lamenting the Korean tourism industry’s promotion of curated, Instagram-ready tourist hotspots while neglecting many unique and more authentic experiences that tourists are more likely to enjoy.
READ: The Fish Versus Ducks Problem in Korean Tourism. ZenKimchi. May 14, 2026.
That made me think of Berlin’s double Venices. Two different districts nicknamed after the Italian city.
Neu-Venedig (New Venice), probably the better known of the two, is a neighborhood in southeast Berlin that is crisscrossed with canals. Residents and visitors get around the neighborhood with canoes and rowboats.
The neighborhood was first developed in 1890 when the city of Köpenick, now part of Berlin, acquired the property of the former Rahnsdorf manor and Hessenwinkel estates. The city originally planned to drain the marshy meadows near the Spree River for housing blocks. But instead decided to construct canals and develop them as villa district of vacation cottages for wealthy Berliners.
According to Visit Berlin, the original residents wanted to nickname the area Little Cameroon (you can maybe understand why, here) and it was only later that the comparison to the Italian city became common.
Klein aber fein
But don’t confuse Neu Venedig (New Venice) with Klein Venedig (Little Venice) as the person above seems to have done in the video titles!
Klein Venedig is a totally different area around the Tiefwerder district in northwest Berlin, near Spandau. There several oxbow lakes along the Havel River, are connected by manmade canals (the Smaller and Larger Jürgengraben and the Hauptgraben) that also lead to the confluence with the Spree.
The area contains the only remaining natural floodplain and pike spawning ground in Berlin, as well as remnants of old-grown riparian forest and natural wet meadows, making it an important area for species conservation.
Like Neu Venedig, it is also a popular area for recreation with people renting canoes and other small watercraft to travel around the lakes and rivers.
But why not pick another nickname? It’s not like there aren’t other cities with canals lined by pretty houses. Maybe change it up a bit.
Or, just let them become known for their own unique histories. Both areas are pretty cool. But they aren’t Venice. They don’t need to be. Why invite comparison?
Little Venices everywhere
And it isn’t just a Berlin thing. All over Germany, wherever you find an area with a lot of small rivers, streams or canals, it’s probably called some variation of Little Venice or New Venice.
A quick Google search tells me there are five besides the ones in Berlin.
Bamberg (Bavaria): The most famous Klein-Venedig in Germany. It features a spectacular 17th-century row of half-timbered fishermen’s houses strung along the Regnitz River, offering actual gondola rides.
Bad Kreuznach (Rhineland-Palatinate): A picturesque historical district located where the Ellerbach flows into the Nahe River, known for its houses built directly on the old 13th-century city wall.
Wolfenbüttel (Lower Saxony): Famous for its surviving network of former Oker river trenches and grids that wind through the old town.
Leipzig (Saxony): Often called “Little Venice” because of its massive web of rivers and canals, most notably the Karl Heine Canal.
Hamburg: While formally referred to as “the Venice of the North” due to its 2,500+ bridges, various waterfront neighborhoods in the city are sometimes affectionately given the Klein-Venedig moniker.
Adding to that, Klein Venedig was also another name used for Welserland, the short-lived German colony in what is now Venezuela.
I mean, OK, but couldn’t you be a little creative?
Admittedly, the nicknames aren’t hurting anyone. But all of these places have their own stories to tell, they weren’t created as mini-Venice homages. They developed their maritime (is that used for rivers, too?) culture for their own reasons and in their own way.
Call them by their real name.
A subscriber just sent me an interesting question: How deep are the canals in Neu and Klein Venedig (the ones in Berlin)? I had to look it up: They are very shallow - between half a meter and one meter deep.
Also, in reading more about Neu Venedig, I learned that the interior of the canal settlement area has been designated as a flood relief area -- as obviously it is in a flood plain. But construction of permanent, year-round housing is banned, because the area would be flooded in an emergency to protect the city of Berlin.