Things to do in Venice

• Peggy Guggenheim Collection fills a low, unfinished palazzo on the Grand Canal with the private modern art collection Peggy Guggenheim built around Picasso, Pollock, Kandinsky and Dali, its garden holding sculpture beside the water.
• St Mark's Campanile rises 99 metres over the square it anchors, a 1912 replica of the medieval tower that collapsed in 1902, with a lift climbing to views across the rooftops and the lagoon.
• Teatro La Fenice opened in 1792 and has burned down twice, rebuilt again after its 1996 fire as an exact replica, with daytime tours through the gilded auditorium when no performance is scheduled.
• Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo hides a spiral external staircase of stacked arches behind a narrow courtyard near Campo Manin, a rare piece of Gothic-Renaissance architecture with views from its rooftop loggia.
• A gondola ride along the Grand Canal passes beneath the Rialto Bridge and the palazzi lining Venice's main waterway, the classic way to see the city from water level rather than from its bridges.
• Scuola Grande di San Rocco holds more than fifty canvases Tintoretto painted for the confraternity over two decades, covering the walls and ceilings of its two great halls in one of Venice's densest collections.
• Basilica dei Frari is the Franciscan church of Santa Maria Gloriosa, its brick Gothic interior holding Titian's Assumption over the high altar and the composer Monteverdi among its tombs.
• San Giorgio Maggiore stands on its own island across the water from St Mark's Square, Palladio's white facade fronting a bell tower whose lift gives one of the widest views over Venice and its lagoon.
• Murano has blown glass in furnaces along its canals since 1291, when the Republic moved the city's glassmakers there over fire risk, and its showrooms and small Glass Museum still trade the craft today.
• Burano strings brightly painted fishermen's houses along narrow canals, a lace-making tradition still practised in a few workshops and a small museum, reached by vaporetto in 40 to 45 minutes from Fondamente Nove.

Venice grew as a refuge in a lagoon and became the seat of a maritime republic that ruled Mediterranean trade for nearly a thousand years, from 827 until Napoleon ended it in 1797. That history left a city built entirely on water, its wealth still visible in Gothic palazzi, Byzantine mosaics and the paintings Titian and Tintoretto left across its churches and scuole.

Neighbourhoods to know

The historic centre splits into six sestieri. San Marco holds the main square, the basilica and the highest concentration of sights. San Polo and Santa Croce, across the Rialto, keep the market and the Frari's art. Dorsoduro gathers the Accademia, the Guggenheim and a quieter pace along the Zattere. Cannaregio, behind the station, holds the Jewish Ghetto and canals with fewer visitors, while Castello stretches east past the Arsenale.

When to go and for how long

Mid to late spring and early to mid autumn bring milder weather than the humid heat of July and August, when the lagoon draws its biggest crowds. Winter empties the calli but brings acqua alta, the periodic flooding that can raise water above the pavement several times a season. Two to three full days cover the main sestieri at a steady pace, with a fourth for Murano and Burano.

Getting around

Venice has no cars in its historic centre: vaporetto water buses run the Grand Canal and the outer islands, water taxis cost more but go door to door, and walking covers most distances between sights faster than waiting for a boat. Bridges and narrow calli make wheeled luggage awkward, so a hotel close to a vaporetto stop cuts down on the walking.