Veneto is one of the twenty regions of Italy. Its population is about five million, ranking fifth in Italy. The region’s capital and largest city is Venice. Veneto, as part of the Republic of Venice, had been an independent state for more than a millennium.
The Republic was not restored at the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars and was annexed by the Austrian Empire, until it was ceded to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence. Venice ruled for centuries over one of the largest and richest maritime republics and trade empires in the world.