Flight time
2h 20m
Best season
October–November & February
Budget
Mid-range to splurge
Best for
Canals, art, architecture, romance
Overview
Why Venice for a city break?
There is nowhere on earth like Venice — a city of 118 islands connected by 400 bridges, built on wooden piles driven into a lagoon, where the streets are canals and the traffic is boats. It shouldn't exist; the fact that it does, and has done for 1,500 years, is one of civilisation's great improbabilities. The Basilica di San Marco, the Doge's Palace, the Grand Canal lined with Gothic and Renaissance palaces, Tintoretto's ceiling paintings in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco — this is one of the most concentrated accumulations of beauty and history in human experience.
From most UK airports Venice is around two and a quarter hours — fly into Marco Polo Airport, 12km from the city, and arrive by water taxi or vaporetto. Go in October or November when the crowds thin and the acqua alta (high water) floods the Piazza San Marco in otherworldly fashion. February brings Carnevale — extraordinary masks and costumes. July and August are overwhelming: 30 million visitors a year, 30°C heat, and the vaporetti so crowded as to be almost unusable. A three-night stay is the minimum; Venice rewards those who stay long enough to find their own rhythms.
Where to stay & explore
Venice's best neighbourhoods
Dorsoduro
The most liveable sestiere — the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Gallerie dell'Accademia, and the Campo Santa Margherita where students and locals gather. Stay here over San Marco.
Cannaregio
The northern sestiere, home to the Jewish Ghetto (the original ghetto, from which all others take their name), the Ca' d'Oro palace and the most authentically residential part of Venice.
Castello
The largest and least touristy sestiere — the Arsenale shipyard, the Biennale gardens, and the Via Garibaldi with its morning market and neighbourhood cafés.
Things to do
What to see in Venice
1
Basilica di San Marco & the Doge's Palace
The Basilica — a Byzantine confection of golden mosaics, Greek columns and Oriental domes — is the most extraordinary church in Italy. Go at 9am when it opens; the mosaic ceiling in the morning light is extraordinary. Book the Doge's Palace (Palazzo Ducale) online — the Bridge of Sighs, the Great Council Chamber (Tintoretto's Paradise, the largest oil painting in the world), and the prison are all included. The Secret Itineraries tour accesses the inquisition rooms and the cell where Casanova was imprisoned.
2
Scuola Grande di San Rocco
Tintoretto spent 23 years painting the ceilings and walls of this 16th-century confraternity building — the result is one of the greatest cycles of paintings in European art, the Venetian answer to the Sistine Chapel. Take the mirrors provided to look at the ceiling without breaking your neck. Almost always quiet; one of the most undervisited great sights in Italy.
3
Gallerie dell'Accademia
The finest collection of Venetian painting in the world — Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese — in a converted monastery in Dorsoduro. The chronological hang tells the story of Venetian painting from the 14th to 18th centuries. Book online; it gets busy. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection next door covers the modern end.
4
A vaporetto on the Grand Canal at dawn
Line 1 runs the full length of the Grand Canal — 3.8km of palaces, churches and bridges from Santa Lucia station to San Marco. At 6am, with the mist on the water and almost no one on the boat, it is one of the finest journeys in European travel. A single vaporetto ticket covers the whole canal; a 24-hour pass (€25) makes more economic sense if you're using it repeatedly.
Food & drink
Where to eat in Venice
Osteria alle Testiere
Seafood / Castello
The finest seafood restaurant in Venice — a tiny room of nine tables where Bruno Gavagnin serves whatever the Rialto fish market had that morning. Cichetti, raw Adriatic prawns, grancevola (spider crab), spaghetti alle vongole. Book weeks ahead; two sittings nightly, nine tables, always full.
Cantina Do Mori
Bacaro / oldest wine bar
Venice's oldest bacaro (wine bar), open since 1462 — a dark, cramped room of hanging copper pots where Casanova drank and where the cichetti (small snacks) are still made fresh each morning. The house wines are served in small glasses (ombre). One of the most atmospheric places to eat and drink in Italy.
Rialto Market
Fish & vegetable market
The Rialto fish and vegetable markets open at 7.30am Tuesday to Saturday — the finest market in Italy, where Venetian chefs buy their fish and where the produce of the lagoon (soft-shell crabs, razor clams, lagoon vegetables) appears nowhere else. The market itself is free; breakfast at one of the surrounding bacari afterwards is the move.
Itinerary
3 days in Venice — a suggested itinerary
Day 1
Arrive by water, San Marco at dawn, Dorsoduro evening
Water taxi from Marco Polo Airport is the finest arrival in European travel (€110, 30 minutes); the Alilaguna public boat is cheaper (€15, 75 minutes). Drop your bags in Dorsoduro — the best base — and walk immediately to San Marco before the city wakes. The Basilica at 9am opening, the Doge's Palace at 10am (booked online). Lunch at one of the bacari around the Campo San Bartolomeo — cichetti and an ombra (small glass of wine). Afternoon: vaporetto Line 1 the full length of the Grand Canal, disembarking at different stops to explore — the Ca' d'Oro, the fish market at Rialto, the Frari church (Titian's Assumption above the altar). Campo Santa Margherita for aperitivo at 6pm — spritz con Aperol, local students, the best people-watching in Venice. Dinner at Cantina Do Mori.
Day 2
Scuola San Rocco, Accademia, the islands
The Rialto market at 7.30am — buy something to eat on the spot, see what Venice actually eats. Scuola Grande di San Rocco opens at 9.30am — take the mirrors, look at the ceiling for 30 minutes, come back and look again. The Frari church is five minutes away (Titian's Assumption, Bellini's triptych in the sacristy). Gallerie dell'Accademia in the afternoon — the Bellini room, the Carpaccio cycle, the Titian. Vaporetto to the islands: Murano (glassblowing workshops, the glass museum) is 10 minutes from Fondamente Nove; Burano (lace-making, the most colourful houses in the lagoon) is 45 minutes. Return to Dorsoduro for dinner — Osteria alle Testiere if the booking came through.
Day 3
Cannaregio, the Ghetto, one last vaporetto at dusk
Cannaregio in the morning — the Jewish Ghetto (the world's first, 1516) with its synagogues and the Museum of Jewish Venice, the Ca' d'Oro (the finest Gothic palace facade on the Grand Canal, with a small collection of Mantegna and Titian), and the largely tourist-free streets around the Fondamenta della Misericordia. Lunch at one of the Cannaregio bacari along the Fondamenta degli Ormesini. Afternoon: the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Dorsoduro — Picasso, Dalí, Ernst, Pollock, Bacon, on the terrace above the Grand Canal. One last vaporetto at dusk from Zattere, watching the light go off the Redentore church across the Giudecca canal. Dinner in Castello for something genuinely local before the morning water taxi to the airport.
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