Known for
Canals, gondolas and Renaissance art across a car-free lagoon city
Must-see landmarks
Doge's Palace, St Mark's Basilica, Rialto Bridge and Teatro La Fenice
Free to visit
Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge and the Rialto market
Getting around
On foot and by vaporetto water bus, since the historic centre has no cars
Piazza San Marco has anchored Venice since the 9th century, ringed by the arcaded Procuratie buildings, Caffe Florian and the red brick Campanile bell tower. Early morning avoids the crowds and pigeons. St Mark's Basilica occupies the square's eastern end, 2 minutes away.
The domed basilica keeps nearly 8,000 square metres of gold mosaics inside, gathered over centuries as the private chapel of the Doges. Entry needs a timed slot booked in advance, bags are checked at the door and photography is forbidden throughout the nave. It opens at 9:30. Doge's Palace sits 1 minute away.
The Gothic palace was the seat of Venetian government for centuries, its rooms lined with paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese leading to the prison cells crossed by the Bridge of Sighs. It opens at 9:00, with extended hours in summer. The bridge itself is best viewed from outside, 3 minutes further along the waterfront.
The enclosed limestone bridge links the Doge's Palace to its former prison, named for the sighs of convicts glimpsing their last view of Venice through its windows. It is seen from the Ponte della Paglia rather than crossed. The Mercerie lead north-west to the Rialto Bridge, about 11 minutes on foot.
The single stone span has crossed the Grand Canal since 1591, its covered arcade lined with shops and its steps giving the best view up and down the waterway. Gondolas and vaporetti pass constantly underneath. The Rialto Market spreads out just beyond the bridge's northern end, 4 minutes away.
Venice's oldest market has traded fish, fruit and vegetables on this bend of the Grand Canal for centuries, its stalls busiest in the early morning and closed by early afternoon, shut entirely on Sunday. The walk south-west through San Polo and across the Accademia Bridge reaches the Gallerie dell'Accademia in about 20 minutes.
Venice's leading art museum traces the city's painting from the 14th to the 18th century across former convent halls, with Titian, Bellini and Veronese among the highlights. It opens at 8:15, with shorter hours on Monday. The Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute stands 10 minutes away along the Dorsoduro waterfront.
Baldassare Longhena's octagonal domed church was built as a votive offering after the plague of 1630, its white facade marking the mouth of the Grand Canal opposite St Mark's Square. The interior opens in two sessions around the middle of the day, and the steps outside make a quiet close to the walk.
Five domes and nearly 8,000 square metres of gold mosaic cover the church the Doges kept as their private chapel, layered over centuries with marble, porphyry and spoils carried home from Constantinople. The four bronze horses on the balcony are copies, the originals standing inside the museum beside a terrace that looks the length of the piazza. Photography is not allowed in the nave, and larger bags go to a deposit a few steps away before visitors join the queue.
Location: Piazza San Marco 328, San Marco
Access: Timed entry, only within the booked slot, Monday to Saturday from 9:30 and Sunday from 14:00 · Tickets and tours
The seat of Venetian government for most of the Republic's life stacks a pink and white Gothic facade over an arcaded ground floor, then opens into rooms hung with Tintoretto and Veronese, among them the vast Sala del Maggior Consiglio. The route climbs the Golden Staircase, passes the armoury and the chamber where the Council of Ten met, and drops at the end to the canal-side cells the Republic used as prisons.
Style: Venetian Gothic
Location: Piazza San Marco 1, San Marco
Access: Ticketed, open daily 9:00 to 19:00 · Tickets and tours
Antonio Contin's enclosed limestone bridge arches over the Rio di Palazzo to link the palace interrogation rooms with the new prisons, and its two stone lattices let convicts glimpse the lagoon one last time on the way across. The name is Byron's invention rather than a Venetian one. Most visitors photograph it from the Ponte della Paglia on the waterfront, where the crush thins early in the morning and late in the evening.
Architect: Antonio Contin
Location: Rio di Palazzo, seen from the Ponte della Paglia, San Marco
Access: Free to view from the waterfront, and crossed only on the Doge's Palace route
Antonio da Ponte's single stone arch has carried the crossing since 1591, replacing a timber bridge that had collapsed more than once, and it still holds two rows of shops along its covered ramps. The steps at either end give the standard view up and down the Grand Canal, busiest around midday and quietest before breakfast. Gondola rides pass beneath it all day, and the vaporetto stop sits at the northern foot.
Architect: Antonio da Ponte
Location: Grand Canal, between San Marco and San Polo
Access: Free to cross at any hour
Venice has traded fish, fruit and vegetables on this bend of the Grand Canal for centuries, under the arcades of the Erberia and in the neo-Gothic Pescheria hall beside it. The stalls are busiest in the early morning and pack up by early afternoon, and the market shuts entirely on Sunday. Even with nothing to buy, the walk past the counters is one of the few places where the working city is still on show rather than on display.
Location: Campo de la Pescaria, San Polo
Access: Free to walk through
Venetian painting from the 14th to the 18th century hangs in the former Scuola Grande della Carità and the convent Palladio rebuilt next door, with Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese in sequence. The rooms run chronologically, so a short visit can start on the Byzantine gold grounds and stop wherever the Renaissance runs out, and the Palladian cloister is worth the detour on the way to the exit.
Architect: Andrea Palladio, Giorgio Massari
Location: Campo della Carità, Dorsoduro 1050
Access: Ticketed, Tuesday to Sunday 9:00 to 19:00, closed on Monday
Baldassare Longhena's octagonal church stands at the mouth of the Grand Canal, built as the votive offering the Senate promised after the plague of 1630 and finished long after his death. The white Istrian stone dome and the great volutes propping it were designed to be read from across the water rather than up close. Inside, the sacristy keeps Titian ceiling panels and Tintoretto's Marriage at Cana.
Architect: Baldassare Longhena · Style: Baroque
Location: Campo della Salute, Dorsoduro 1
Access: Free to enter the main rotunda, 9:00 to 17:30, with a ticket for the sacristy museum
Named for the phoenix before it had any reason to be, the opera house opened in 1792 and has burned down twice, most recently in 1996, rebuilt each time as a replica of what was lost. Verdi premiered Rigoletto and La traviata here, Rossini and Stravinsky too. Daytime visits take in the gilded horseshoe auditorium, the royal box and the Apollonian rooms whenever nothing is being staged or rehearsed.
Architect: Gian Antonio Selva
Location: Campo San Fantin, San Marco 1965
Access: Ticketed, daily visits 9:30 to 18:00, times can change at short notice · Tickets and tours
Books here live in a full-size gondola, half a dozen bathtubs and stacks of waterproof bins, an arrangement the owner settled on after one flood too many. A staircase built from water-damaged encyclopedias climbs to a view over the side canal, resident cats sleep on the stock, and the back room opens straight onto the water. It stays a working shop rather than an attraction, and it gets tight when several groups arrive at once.
Location: Calle Lunga Santa Maria Formosa 5176/B, Castello
Access: Free to browse, open daily 9:00 to 19:10 with last entry at 19:00
Settled in the 5th century by refugees from the mainland, Torcello was the lagoon's first city and far outgrew Venice before malaria and silt emptied it. What remains is a grass path along a canal, a scatter of buildings and the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, whose apse holds a Byzantine Virgin on plain gold and whose west wall carries a Last Judgement in mosaic. Its bell tower climbs to the widest view of the northern lagoon.
Location: Torcello, northern lagoon, reached by vaporetto from Fondamente Nove
Access: The island is free to walk, with a ticket for the basilica and its bell tower, open 10:30 to 18:00 from March to October
Piazza San Marco costs nothing to enter or cross at any hour, the one square in Venice grand enough to be called a piazza rather than a campo. The basilica and the bell tower facing it charge their own admission. Early in the day, before the tour groups arrive, is the quietest time to see it.
The church interior of San Giorgio Maggiore, facing St Mark's Square from its own island, costs nothing to visit and rarely draws a queue. The lift up the bell tower charges a separate fare, and the vaporetto crossing to reach the island isn't free either. Mid-morning tends to be quieter.
The Cannaregio neighbourhood that gave the word ghetto its meaning is free to walk, its Campo del Ghetto Novo ringed by the tall buildings and five historic synagogues of a Jewish community still active today. The guided tours inside the synagogues and the Jewish Museum charge their own admission.
The Giardini Reali, tucked behind the Procuratie Nuove just steps from St Mark's Square, charge no entrance fee and rarely appear on a first-time visitor's map. The gravel paths and lawns run down to the water's edge, and the small pavilion cafe inside charges for a coffee or a seat.
Dorsoduro's largest square fills with a small produce and fish market on weekday mornings and with students and bars by evening, framed by 14th and 15th century houses and the stump of a bell tower with no spire. There is never a charge to sit or walk through it.
One of the last working gondola boatyards in the city repairs and builds boats behind Tyrolean-style wooden sheds on a narrow canal in Dorsoduro. It stays closed to visitors, but anyone can watch the craftsmen at work for free from the fondamenta on the opposite bank.
Fishermen painted their houses in blocks of colour to tell them apart through lagoon fog, and the rule still holds: repainting needs permission.
Location: Burano, northern lagoon
The island asylum that held Venetian patients for two centuries keeps its restraints, medical instruments and case records in a museum on the old wards.
Location: Isola di San Servolo
A monastery island later used as a base for Nazi frogmen, now abandoned to crumbling walls and seabirds and best seen from a passing boat.
Location: San Giorgio in Alga, southern lagoon
Armenian monks have kept this island monastery since 1717, with a manuscript library, gardens of artichokes and roses, and a rose jam made on site.
Location: Isola di San Lazzaro degli Armeni
Europe's first plague quarantine station opened here in 1423, and excavations later uncovered mass graves holding hundreds of victims of the epidemics.
Location: Lazzaretto Vecchio, off the Lido
Eight early doges lie in a crypt that now stands under water all year, visible from the steps beneath the church's Renaissance facade.
Location: Campo San Zaccaria, Castello
The sculptor designed this marble pyramid for Titian; his pupils built it for Canova instead, and his heart rests inside it in a porphyry urn.
Location: Basilica dei Frari, San Polo
Four large bones hang behind the altar, brought back as a slain dragon's remains and long since identified as belonging to a whale.
Location: Campo San Donato, Murano
The city's oldest church by tradition, wedged among the market stalls, wears a 15th-century clock that has almost never told the right time.
Location: Campo San Giacomo di Rialto, San Polo
Deconsecrated in 1810 and used as a tobacco store and later a cinema, the ancient church is now a university auditorium with a truncated tower.
Location: Campo Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro
The leaning Renaissance palace on the Grand Canal carries a reputation for ruining its owners, a run of deaths and bankruptcies locals still recount.
Location: Campiello Barbaro, Dorsoduro
The walled cemetery island holds Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Ezra Pound among its cypresses, reached by the vaporetto that runs on to Murano.
Location: Isola di San Michele, northern lagoon
Ships waited out quarantine here from 1468; the storehouse walls still carry graffiti left by crews, and archaeologists have found plague burials.
Location: Lazzaretto Nuovo, northern lagoon
Four marble footprints mark the corners where rival factions began bare-knuckle brawls on a parapet-free bridge, the loser going into the canal.
Location: Campo San Barnaba, Dorsoduro
Two granite columns stand on the Piazzetta; a third slid off the barge in the 12th century and is still somewhere in the basin mud.
Location: Piazzetta San Marco
Named for the balconies where licensed prostitutes were once encouraged to display themselves, a measure the Republic aimed at the district's habits.
Location: Calle Agnello, San Polo
The porphyry emperors embedded in the basilica corner were looted from Constantinople, and a missing heel turned up there during later excavations.
Location: Piazzetta dei Leoncini, San Marco
Two iron hooks on a bridge pillar are rubbed for luck, though they once helped moor the boats that carried coffins to the cemetery island.
Location: Ponte San Canciano, Cannaregio
A stone seat on Torcello's green, named for a king who never sat in it and more likely used by the island's bishop or magistrate.
Location: Piazza Torcello, Torcello
An Austrian gun tower of 1811 on Sant'Erasmo, now an exhibition space among the vineyards and vegetable plots that still supply the city.
Location: Sant'Erasmo, northern lagoon
Two bronze figures have struck the hour since 1499 above a dial tracking the zodiac and the moon, and guided visits climb to the mechanism.
Location: Piazza San Marco
A spiral staircase of stacked arches winds up the back of a palace in a courtyard most people walk past, ending at a rooftop loggia.
Location: Corte Contarina del Bovolo, San Marco
The marble lion guarding the Arsenale gate was taken from Athens in 1687 and carries Norse runes cut by Varangian mercenaries centuries earlier.
Location: Campo de l'Arsenal, Castello
Its trompe-l'oeil marble facade fronts the city hospital, and the upstairs halls keep a medical library of anatomical books and old surgical instruments.
Location: Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Castello
The collector is buried in the garden of her palazzo beside a plaque listing the fourteen Lhasa Apsos interred with her.
Location: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Dorsoduro
The statue of the scholar stands over a stack of his own books, an arrangement that earned it a nickname no guidebook prints.
Location: Campo Santo Stefano, San Marco
An elaborate wrought-iron lamp with a coiled dragon hangs over a shopping street, passed daily by thousands who never look up.
Location: Marzarieta Due Aprile, San Marco
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.
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.
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. Venice also connects by fast rail to Verona, Padua and Bologna, all under two hours away, for travellers combining it with other places to visit in Italy.
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.