The Venice of the North

This is a real minefield for quiz question setters (never mind contestants).

Any town or city that's proud of its canals, it would seem, has probably been described as "the Venice of the North" by someone at some time – even if only in jest. Including, apparently, some that aren't in the north of anywhere.

One website, named heyexplorer.com, lists 15 cities that "are known as The Venice of the North". They include St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Copenhagen. Somewhat surprisingly, they also include Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds; but possibly the most bizarre mention of all goes to Tigre, Argentina. (According to Hey Explorer, "The New York Times once described Tigre as 'what Venice might have looked like before development' because of its islands and canals." Hey Explorer seems not to have noticed the absence of the word 'North' in this description, or the fact that Tigre – a city in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area – is actually in the Southern Hemisphere.)

Wikipedia – never one to be outdone when it comes to hyperbole – lists almost 40 places in what it calls 'an incomplete list'. As well as Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, they include Bourton–on–the–Water (Gloucestershire), Maryhill (Glasgow), Paddington (London), and Skipton (North Yorkshire).

I'm sorry to say that for some time, this website proclaimed Amsterdam (exclusively) as the Venice of the North; hence the position of this nickname in the table. The identity of my source for this nomination is lost in the mists of time.

The message for quiz question setters would seem to be: avoid this subject!

Although it's probably safe to do what one question setter in Stockport Quiz League did in 2017, and ask "What nickname is shared by ... ?" (The Stockport list was St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bruges and Hamburg.)