VENICE · ITALY
A city built on water, best taken slowly.
The Doge’s Palace and the golden basilica, gondolas on the Grand Canal and glass furnaces on Murano. Cicchetti by the canal, Vivaldi by candlelight, and the lagoon islands a boat ride away.
Only here
Three things you can really only do in Venice.
Plenty of cities have churches, boats and pretty glass. Only here is the boat a hand-built gondola, the glass pulled from a furnace exiled to its own island, and the church lined floor-to-dome in Byzantine gold.
Built for the water
The Gondola
The gondola is a Venetian invention shaped by the lagoon itself: a flat-bottomed boat eleven metres long, deliberately built off-kilter so a single oar can drive and steer it through canals too narrow for anything else. Each one is still made by hand in a squero, and a licensed gondolier learns the city by memory. Take it down the Grand Canal, or slip into the silent inner rii.
- 1 Venice: Grand Canal Gondola Ride with App Commentary
- 2 Venice: Grand Canal by Gondola with Live Commentary
- 3 Venice: Shared Gondola Ride Across the Grand Canal
Fire on the lagoon
Murano Glass
In 1291 the Republic moved every glass furnace out to Murano so the flames could not burn the city down, and the secrets of the craft have stayed on that island for seven centuries. Watch a maestro gather molten glass on the end of a blowpipe and pull a horse or a goblet out of it in ninety seconds, in a furnace whose recipe is still a trade secret.
- 1 Venice: Burano, Torcello & Murano Boat Tour w/Glassblowing
- 2 Venice: Murano and Burano Boat Tour with Glass Factory Visit
- 3 Venice: Murano & Burano Panoramic Boat Tour w/ Glassblowing
Gold by the acre
St Mark's Basilica
St Mark’s is a Byzantine church in the middle of Italy, built to house the relics of an evangelist smuggled out of Alexandria under slabs of pork. Inside, more than eight thousand square metres of golden mosaic curve across the domes, lit so the whole ceiling seems to float, and the Pala d’Oro behind the altar holds nearly two thousand gems. There is nothing else like it in the West.
- 1 Doge’s Palace & St. Mark’s Basilica with Terrace Access Tour
- 2 Venice: Doge’s Palace and St. Mark’s Basilica Tour
- 3 Venice: St. Mark’s Basilica & Doge’s Palace Tour with Ticket
Start here
If you book one thing in Venice, book this.
More travellers reserve this than anything else in the city, and on a first short visit it is the easiest hour to be sure of.
The classics
Venice's Most Popular Experiences
The Doge’s Palace, St Mark’s Basilica, a gondola and the island boat. The handful of things almost every first trip is built around.
Where to begin
The experiences a Venice trip is built around.
The Doge’s Palace, the lagoon islands, a gondola, a Grand Canal cruise, a long table of cicchetti and a candlelit concert. The things most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The day on the water
Which lagoon islands, and in what order.
Most boat tours string three together in a single afternoon, and the order is always the same: glass, then colour, then the quiet beginning. Here is what each one is for, so you know what you are looking at when the boat pulls in.
Cicchetti & bacari
Eat the way the city does, standing up.
Venice does not really do long restaurant dinners. It does cicchetti: small plates of baccalà mantecato, fried lagoon seafood and bread piled with whatever was good that morning, eaten at the counter of a bacaro with a small glass of wine, an ombra, in hand. A guided crawl moves you between the good ones, off the tourist canals and into the back lanes where Venetians actually drink.
Read the guide: the best food & wine tours in Venice →After the day-trippers leave
Venice is a different city after dark.
When the cruise crowds catch the last boat out, the lanes empty and the water goes still. This is the hour for Vivaldi played by candlelight in a frescoed scuola, a gilded box at La Fenice, or a lantern-lit walk through the plague stories and quiet murders of a city that has had a thousand years to accumulate ghosts.
See the evening experiences →The Grand Canal
The main street is three kilometres of water.
Venice’s great thoroughfare loops through the city in a reversed S, four hundred years of palazzo facades rising straight from the tide on either side because the families who built them wanted to be seen from the water. There is no pavement and no traffic, only boats. Ride its length by gondola, by vaporetto, or by private launch at dusk.
Grand Canal & lagoon cruises →The Doge’s Palace
A thousand years of the Republic, under one roof.
For most of a millennium this pink-and-white Gothic palace on the water was the whole machinery of Venice at once: the doge’s residence, the senate, the law courts and, over the canal by the Bridge of Sighs, the prison Casanova famously broke out of. The Secret Itineraries tour takes you behind the staterooms into the cramped cells and torture rooms the Republic kept out of sight. Skip-the-line entry is close to essential.
- 1 Venice: Doge’s Palace Reserved Entry Ticket
- 2 Doge’s Palace & St. Mark’s Basilica with Terrace Access Tour
- 3 Legendary Venice: Doge’s Palace, St Mark’s & VIP Terrace Access
Beyond the lagoon
The mainland is closer than you think.
Venice sits at the foot of the Veneto, and two of Italy’s best days out are an easy run from the station. North, the Prosecco hills roll between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, all vine-striped ridges and cellar-door tastings. Further up, the pale towers of the Dolomites rise over Cortina. Both are simple day trips, and a good way to give a short Venice stay a second gear.
See all 16 day trips →By place
Pick a corner of the lagoon.
The Doge’s Palace for the Republic. St Mark’s for the gold. The islands for glass and colour. The Grand Canal for the palazzi. Cannaregio for the first ghetto. The Prosecco hills for the day you leave the water.
By experience
Or pick how to spend the hours.
A gondola if you want the water. A walk if you want the back lanes. A boat if you want the islands. Cicchetti, glassblowing, a mask in the making, or Vivaldi after dark.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in the city? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without a wasted hour: the heart, the islands, and the table.
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