Piazza Cristoforo Colombo Live Cam

A stone Columbus rides a ship's prow in the fountain at the centre of Piazza Cristoforo Colombo in Abano Terme, in the Veneto. The camera looks north over the square from the roof of a hotel.

The town runs on hot water. Rain that fell on the Lessini mountains eighty kilometres north-west works its way down through the rock for decades and comes back up here at about 87 degrees, carrying salt and iodine with it.

The same water matures the mud: local clay is left in tanks under a flow from the springs for two months before it is used in treatment. Abano lies at the foot of the Euganean Hills, ten kilometres from Padua, and most of its buildings are hotels with thermal pools of their own.