San Marco
The sestiere of the piazza, the basilica and the Doge's Palace, and the most expensive ground in the city. Stay here for the address and the evening when the day trippers have gone; by day the crowd runs from ten until five.
Things to do
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Accademia Bridge
The wooden bridge across the Grand Canal to Dorsoduro, with the postcard view down the canal to the Salute. Built as a temporary structure in 1933 and still there.
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Arsenale
The state shipyard that built the Republic's fleet, a walled city within the city, with the lion gate of 1460 and the Biennale's exhibitions in its sheds in alternate years.
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Bridge of Sighs
The enclosed white bridge of 1600 linking the Doge's Palace to the prisons, seen from the Ponte della Paglia on the waterfront. Crossed from inside on the palace ticket.
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Burano
A lagoon island of painted fishermen's houses, historically a lacemaking town, about forty minutes out by vaporetto. The colours were a practical code for telling one house from another in fog. Torcello is ten minutes further on the same line and the two are done in one trip.
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Doge's Palace
The seat of Venetian government and the law courts, in white Istrian stone and pink Verona marble on an open arcade. The Secret Itineraries tour reaches the attic prisons and the interrogation rooms, which the standard route does not. The two visits together take most of a morning.
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Giardini della Biennale
The public gardens at the end of Castello holding the national pavilions of the art and architecture Biennales; between the shows the park is the quietest place in the city.
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Libreria Acqua Alta
The bookshop in Castello that keeps its stock in bathtubs and a gondola against the floods, with a staircase of old books in the courtyard.
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Murano
The glassmaking island, where the Republic moved its furnaces in 1291 to keep fire away from the city and the technique away from rival cities. The Museo del Vetro holds pieces back to Roman times. Furnace demonstrations run through the day on the main canal.
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Piazza San Marco
The only piazza in Venice, the rest being campi, ringed by the Procuratie arcades with the basilica at its head and the campanile beside it. Acqua alta floods it first, and the cafe orchestras charge for the music.
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Rialto Bridge
The oldest of the four bridges over the Grand Canal, finished in stone in 1591 after three earlier wooden ones collapsed. Two rows of shops run along its span. It is crossed at all hours and the steps are busy through the middle of the day.
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Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute
An octagonal domed church at the mouth of the Grand Canal, begun in 1631 as a votive offering after a plague that killed a third of the city. Titian and Tintoretto canvases hang in the sacristy. The votive procession across a pontoon bridge still runs each November.
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Ca' d'Oro
The most ornate Gothic palace on the Grand Canal, in Cannaregio, with the Franchetti collection and a balcony that is the point of the visit.
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Ca' Rezzonico
A Grand Canal palace kept as a museum of eighteenth-century Venice, with Tiepolo ceilings and rooms furnished to the period. It shows how the merchant families actually lived, down to the kitchen and the pharmacy. The vaporetto stop is directly outside the water gate.
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Fondaco dei Tedeschi
The German merchants' warehouse at the foot of the Rialto, now a department store with a free rooftop terrace over the Grand Canal, booked online in fifteen-minute slots.
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Frari
The Franciscan church of San Polo, brick outside and Titian inside: the Assumption on the high altar and his tomb opposite Canova's pyramid. Bellini's triptych is in the sacristy.
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Gallerie dell'Accademia
The definitive collection of Venetian painting to the eighteenth century, with Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese in depth. Giorgione's Tempest is here and is worth the visit on its own. It sits at the foot of its own bridge over the Grand Canal and is rarely crowded.
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Lido
The eleven-kilometre barrier island with the Adriatic beach, the Film Festival in September and the only cars in Venice. Fifteen minutes by vaporetto from San Zaccaria.
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Madonna dell'Orto
Tintoretto's parish church at the northern edge of Cannaregio, with his paintings in the choir and his tomb; the walk to it along the fondamente is the reason to come.
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Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Modernist painting and sculpture in the unfinished palazzo on the Grand Canal where Guggenheim lived for thirty years. Pollock, Ernst, Picasso and Brancusi, in rooms small enough to see them properly. The sculpture garden behind the house is part of the ticket and holds her grave.
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Punta della Dogana
The old customs house at the tip of Dorsoduro, made a contemporary art space by Tadao Ando for the Pinault collection, with the lagoon on three sides.
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Redentore
Palladio's votive church on the Giudecca, built after the plague of 1576, the reason for the July festival when a pontoon bridge is thrown across the channel.
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Rialto Market
The fish and produce market beside the bridge, trading on the same spot since the eleventh century. It runs mornings only and is shut on Sundays, and the fish hall also closes Mondays. It is a short walk from the bridge on the San Polo side.
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San Giorgio Maggiore
Palladio's white church on its own island facing the piazza, with a campanile whose lift gives the one view of Venice that has San Marco in it. One vaporetto stop from San Zaccaria.
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Santi Giovanni e Paolo
The Dominican church of Castello, the Republic's pantheon with twenty-five doges buried in it, on a campo with Verrocchio's Colleoni on horseback outside.
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Scuola Grande di San Rocco
A confraternity hall Tintoretto spent twenty-three years filling with more than sixty paintings, ceiling and walls together. Mirrors are provided so the ceilings can be studied without craning. It stands beside the Frari church, and the two are usually done together in one visit.
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St Mark's Basilica
The city's state church for eight centuries, built on a Greek cross plan and lined with gold ground mosaics laid between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The four bronze horses above the door were looted from Constantinople in 1204. The loggia upstairs holds the originals and is entered separately.
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St Mark's Campanile
The bell tower on the piazza, ninety-eight metres high, rebuilt exactly as it was after it collapsed into the square in 1902. A lift goes to the top and the queue is shortest early. The bells still ring the hours out over the square below.
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Teatro La Fenice
Venice's opera house, burned down and rebuilt three times, most recently after arson in 1996. The daytime audio tour gets into the auditorium and the boxes when there is no rehearsal. Performances run from autumn through the spring season and tickets go on sale months ahead.
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Torcello
The first part of the lagoon to be settled and now almost empty, with a seventh-century cathedral holding a Byzantine Last Judgement mosaic. Fewer than twenty residents remain. The campanile beside the cathedral is climbed for the view over the lagoon, and the boat out takes about forty minutes.
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Venetian Ghetto
The island in Cannaregio where the Republic confined its Jewish population from 1516, and the origin of the word ghetto. Building upward was the only way to grow, so the houses here are the tallest in the city. The synagogues above the square are seen on a guided tour from the museum.
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Zattere
The long southern quay of Dorsoduro facing the Giudecca, with the afternoon sun, the gelato at Nico and the wide water in front. The walk from the Salute to the station side takes half an hour.
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