St Mark's Basilica is the cathedral of Venice and its most famous monument: a Byzantine church with five domes that closes off St Mark's Square, leaning against the Doge's Palace. Outside it is a jumble of marble and columns; inside, a cave of...
The Campanile of St Mark is the tower that dominates St Mark's Square and all of Venice: 98.6 meters of brick, the tallest structure in the city. Venetians call it “el paròn de casa”, the master of the house. From the top you can see the whole...
The Doge's Palace was for centuries the center of Venetian power: the residence of the doge and the seat of the government and the courts, on the waterfront next to St Mark's Basilica. It is a masterpiece of Venetian Gothic, and today a great...
The Rialto Bridge is the oldest stone bridge over the Grand Canal and one of the symbols of Venice: a single white arch, 48 meters long and 22 wide, linking the districts of San Marco and San Polo beside the Rialto market. On top are two rows of...
The Bridge of Sighs is one of the most photographed bridges in the world: an enclosed, covered passage in Istrian stone that spans the Rio di Palazzo and links the Doge's Palace to the New Prisons, a few steps from St Mark's Square.
The...
The Scuola Grande di San Rocco is Tintoretto's masterpiece in Venice: a building in the San Polo district, next to the Frari, whose halls are covered with dozens of enormous canvases by the same painter. Tintoretto worked here from 1564 to 1588,...
The Gallerie dell'Accademia is the great museum of Venetian painting, in the Dorsoduro district, at the foot of the Accademia Bridge. It holds paintings from the 1300s to the 1700s: Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese,...
The Correr Museum is Venice's civic museum, telling the story of the city in every aspect. It stands in St Mark's Square, in the Napoleonic Wing and the New Procuratie, the former residence of Napoleon and the Habsburgs. Inside are Canova's...
St Mark's Square is the monumental heart of Venice: a great trapezoidal space, about 170 meters long, closed off by the basilica, the bell tower and the palaces of the Procuratie. You reach it from the sea through the Piazzetta, between two...
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni is a low white palace on the Grand Canal, in the Dorsoduro district, that houses the Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Picasso, Dalí, Magritte, Pollock, in a house where the American Peggy Guggenheim lived with her dogs. It is...
The Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, known to all as the “Frari”, is a great Gothic brick church in the San Polo district. At 102 meters long, it is the second largest in Venice and holds masterpieces by Titian, Giovanni Bellini and...
The Basilica of Saints John and Paul, to Venetians San Zanipolo, is the largest church in Venice, in the Castello district: a Gothic giant over 100 meters long, considered the city's pantheon for the many doges and illustrious figures buried in...
The Clock Tower closes off one side of St Mark's Square and opens the Merceria, the shopping street that leads to Rialto: a Renaissance tower 24 meters tall, with a great arch and a blue and gold dial. At the top, two bronze giants strike the...
The Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute is the great domed church at the Punta della Dogana, at the mouth of the Grand Canal, facing the St Mark's Basin: one of the symbols of Venice, and the masterpiece of Venetian Baroque. It is an ex-voto to...
The Island of Torcello is a silent island in the northern lagoon, just north of Burano, where a handful of people live today and two Byzantine churches remain: a mosaic of the Last Judgment and the air of a vanished city. Before Venice became...
The Church of the Redentore is Andrea Palladio's white church on the island of the Giudecca: a marble facade, a dome, two slender bell towers. Every third Sunday of July it is the focus of the Festa del Redentore, the great festival of the...
Palazzo Grassi is the great white Istrian-stone palace on the Grand Canal, beside Campo San Samuele, and today one of Venice's best-known contemporary art venues: people come for the exhibitions from François Pinault's collection.
It was...
The Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo is the Mocenigo family home in San Stae, in the Santa Croce district, turned into a museum of fashion, textiles and perfume: a hands-on way to discover how a noble Venetian family of the eighteenth century dressed,...
Murano is the island of glass: seven small islets joined by bridges, northeast of Venice, where since the late thirteenth century the glass that made the lagoon famous around the world has been worked. Several vaporetti go there, from Piazzale...
Burano is an island in the northern lagoon, reached by boat from Venice, famous for its houses painted red, yellow, blue and green lined up along the canals. It is also the home of a needle lace known around the world.
The center is small:...
The Gran Teatro La Fenice, in the San Marco district, in Campo San Fantin, is Venice's main opera house. The name is that of the mythical bird that is reborn from its own ashes, and the theater took it seriously: it has been destroyed twice, and...
The Ghetto of Venice, in the Cannaregio district, is the quarter where, from 1516, the city's Jews were obliged to live. From here the name spread across the world, and it is still the focus of the Venetian Jewish community, with synagogues and...
The Arsenal of Venice is the old shipyard complex at the eastern end of the city, in the Castello district. Behind three kilometers of crenellated red-brick walls the Republic built its ships: at its best, up to sixteen thousand people worked...
The Giudecca is the island facing Dorsoduro, across the canal of the same name, reached by vaporetto from the Zattere. It is really eight small islands joined together: a quiet residential district, with little tourism, from which you see Venice...
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is the modern art museum in Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice. It gathers what the American collector bought in the twentieth century: Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, Pollock, in a house that has...
The Ca' d'Oro is the most celebrated palace of Venetian Gothic, overlooking the Grand Canal in the Cannaregio district. The name comes from the façade, which once had gilded parts in a rich polychromy that has since vanished. Since 1927 it has...
The church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, in Cannaregio, is a small Renaissance temple faced in colored marble, one of the very first in Venice in this style. It looks onto a canal, and it is easy to walk past it without noticing, but it is worth a...
Campo San Polo is the largest campo in Venice after Piazza San Marco, in the district of the same name, between Rialto and Campo Santa Margherita. The name comes from the church of San Polo, which gives onto the campo only with its apse. For...
The National Archaeological Museum of Venice holds a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities overlooking Piazza San Marco, in the Procuratie Nuove. Sculptures, portraits, coins, gems: almost all of it comes from the collecting of Venetian...
The church of San Zaccaria, a few steps from Piazza San Marco and the Doge's Palace, is dedicated to the father of John the Baptist. It has a Renaissance façade in Istrian stone and, inside, a great many works of art, including an altarpiece by...
Ca' Pesaro is a large Baroque palace on the Grand Canal, in the Santa Croce district. It houses the International Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of Oriental Art: it is the place in the city to see art from the nineteenth and twentieth...
Ca' Rezzonico is one of the most famous palaces in Venice: on the Grand Canal, in the Dorsoduro district, it has housed the Museum of the Venetian Eighteenth Century since 1936. The paintings and furniture are arranged as in a home, and the...
The Museo Storico Navale in Venice, run by the Italian Navy, tells the maritime story of Venice and of Italy. It stands in a former Republic granary on the San Biagio waterfront, a few steps from the Arsenal, and spreads over five floors with 42...
Punta della Dogana is the slim triangular blade of Venice that splits the Grand Canal from the Giudecca Canal, right in front of the St Mark's Basin. A tip of Dorsoduro with one of the finest views in the city and, inside the old customs house, a...
Ca' Vendramin Calergi is the great Renaissance palace in Cannaregio overlooking the Grand Canal. Since 1946 it has been home to the Casinò di Venezia, founded in 1638 and considered the oldest gambling house in the world, and it is where Richard...
Madonna dell'Orto is a Gothic brick church in the Cannaregio district of Venice, far from the crowds of St Mark's. It is worth the trip above all for Tintoretto: he lived here, painted ten canvases here, and is buried here.
The first thing...
Venice's Natural History Museum, named after Giancarlo Ligabue, occupies the Fondaco dei Turchi, a 13th-century palace on the Grand Canal in the Santa Croce district. Dinosaurs, fossils and collectors' curiosities: a museum that kids love...
The Grand Canal is Venice's main street: nearly four kilometers of water winding through the historic center in a big backward S, from the train station to the St Mark's Basin. On either side, a thousand years of palaces: for many, it is the most...
The Lido di Venezia is a long, thin island, about twelve kilometers, between the lagoon and the Adriatic. It is Venice's place for a day of sea and golden sand, a strip of dunes and beach clubs on the other side of the lagoon, reached by...
Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, San Zanipolo to Venetians, is one of the largest squares in Venice, in the Castello district on the border with Cannaregio. Here an imposing basilica, a Renaissance marble facade and a bronze masterpiece stand side...