Italy
Venice
A maritime empire's capital preserved whole, with water where the roads should be.
Venice is a thousand-year-old city built across a shallow lagoon on a scatter of low islands, with the Grand Canal for a main street and no cars past the car parks at its edge. It was the capital of a maritime republic that ran Europe's eastern trade for centuries, and the wealth of that empire is still standing in place: the Byzantine gold of St Mark's, Gothic palace fronts on the water, and a body of painting that largely stayed home instead of leaving for museums elsewhere. It is also small, crowded and expensive, and the reward for sleeping there is the couple of hours after the day boats leave, when the back canals empty out.
Suggested stay
3–4 days
Language
Italian
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Venice
No cars the entire historic centre moves on foot and by boat, which changes how a city sounds more than you expect and turns getting lost into the point rather than the problem.
The art centuries of painting still hanging in the churches and confraternity halls it was made for, lit by the windows the painters worked to.
The lagoon the city is only half of it, and the rest is a shallow tidal basin of glass furnaces, fishing islands and salt marsh, all reachable on the ordinary local boats.
The evenings day visitors leave in one wave through the late afternoon, and what is left behind is the version of the place everybody hoped for.
Best time to visit
Mar-Jun, Sep-Oct
Mild spring · 15-28° days
45.405° N, 12.310° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Rome
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Weather & when to go to Venice
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Mar-Jun, Sep-Oct
Conditions Jan Cold & foggy · Feb Cold, Carnival · Mar Mild spring · Apr Pleasant · May-Jun Warm · Jul Hot & humid · Aug Hot · Sep Mild, harvest · Oct Cool autumn · Nov Cold & wet · Dec Cold & foggy
Cards tinted by verified verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Venice
There is no write-off month, but high summer is hot, humid and at its most crowded, and on still days the smell of the canals at low tide is real. Autumn and winter bring acqua alta, the high tides that put duckboards across the lowest squares for a few hours at a time: inconvenient rather than dangerous, and the barriers at the lagoon mouths now hold back the worst of it.
Top things to do in Venice
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St Mark's Basilica - gold mosaics and looted marble
culture arts history 👍 PopularThe doges' private chapel rather than a cathedral for most of its life, and built to look east: five domes, acres of gold-ground mosaic overhead, and a floor of buckled marble that rolls underfoot. The Pala d'Oro behind the altar is a screen of gold, enamel and gems, and the four bronze horses brought back from Constantinople stand in the upstairs museum, with copies out on the loggia. Shoulders covered, no big bags, and a booked entry slot saves a long queue in the square.
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Doge's Palace - the Republic's government in one building
history culture arts 👍 PopularPink and white Gothic arcading on the outside, and inside the machinery of a state that ran itself by committee for a thousand years: the vast Sala del Maggior Consiglio under Tintoretto's Paradise, the council chambers, the armoury, then the covered Bridge of Sighs across to the new prisons. The Secret Itineraries tour takes you into the attic cells and the interrogation rooms behind the state rooms, and needs booking ahead.
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Grand Canal - ride line 1 from end to end
scenic ⭐ Highly recommendedThe slow all-stops waterbus runs the whole S-bend between the car parks and St Mark's basin, past several hundred palace fronts that were all built to be seen from the water. Stand at the open stern or grab a bow seat, go once in daylight and once after dark, and you have the best sightseeing in the city on an ordinary transport ticket.
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Rialto Bridge and the markets behind it
food history 👍 PopularAntonio da Ponte's single stone span won a competition against Palladio and has carried shops along its back since the 1590s. The reason to come is the far side: the Erberia produce stalls and the Pescaria fish market under its neo-Gothic loggia, which trade in the morning only and shut the fish counters at the start of the week. Come early and the crowd on the bridge has not formed yet.
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Scuola Grande di San Rocco - Tintoretto's ceiling cycle
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedA confraternity hall Tintoretto spent more than two decades filling, floor to ceiling, with over fifty canvases, culminating in a wall-sized Crucifixion in the upper side room. Hand mirrors are set out by the door so you can study the ceilings without wrecking your neck. It stays quiet even when the rest of the city is not.
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Gallerie dell'Accademia - Venetian painting under one roof
culture artsThe single best account of what Venice did with colour and light, running from Bellini and Carpaccio's St Ursula cycle through Giorgione's Tempest to Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese's enormous Feast in the House of Levi, renamed after the Inquisition objected to the original subject. Leonardo's Vitruvian Man belongs here too, though it is fragile and rarely out on display.
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Peggy Guggenheim Collection - modern art in an unfinished palace
culture artsThe heiress bought a low, one-storey palazzo on the Grand Canal that was never built up, lived in it for thirty years and left her Pollocks, Ernsts, Picassos and Calders where they hung. The sculpture garden holds her grave and those of her dogs, and the terrace is one of the few places you can stand at water level on the canal without paying for a boat.
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Basilica dei Frari - Titian's Assumption over the altar
culture arts historyA big plain Gothic brick church in San Polo with an outsized collection: Titian's Assumption blazing above the high altar, his Pesaro Madonna off to the side, a Bellini triptych in the sacristy, Titian's own tomb and Canova's strange pyramid monument facing each other across the nave. The choir stalls still stand in the middle of the church, as they originally did.
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The Jewish Ghetto - where the word was invented
history culture artsIn 1516 the Republic confined its Jewish residents to a foundry island in Cannaregio and locked the gates at night, and the word ghetto came from the foundry. Space was capped and building outwards impossible, so the houses went up instead and are the tallest in Venice, with five synagogues hidden in their upper floors. The museum runs the only tours that get you inside them.
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Bacari crawl - cicchetti and an ombra
food nightlife musicThe Venetian way to eat is standing up, moving between bacari for one small plate and one small glass at each: baccala mantecato on grilled polenta, sarde in saor, folpetti, a hard-boiled egg with anchovy. The oldest bars sit in the lanes behind the Rialto market, including Cantina Do Mori and All'Arco, and the run of canal-side places along Fondamenta della Misericordia in Cannaregio is where the city drinks in the evening.
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Santa Maria della Salute - the plague church at the canal mouth
history culture artsLonghena's white octagon was vowed by the city when plague killed something like a third of the population, and it was sited to close the view down the Grand Canal from every angle. Titians hang in the sacristy. The old customs house on the point beyond it now shows contemporary art inside a stripped-back Tadao Ando conversion, and the steps outside are a good place to watch the basin traffic.
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Teatro La Fenice - the opera house that keeps burning down
culture arts historyNamed the phoenix because it rose from the ashes of an earlier theatre, then obliged twice more, most recently in 1996, after which it was rebuilt exactly as it had been and reopened in 2003. Verdi premiered here repeatedly. Daytime audio-guide visits get you into the gilded horseshoe of boxes when there is no rehearsal on.
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Squero di San Trovaso - the gondola boatyard
culture arts off beaten pathOne of the last working squeri, tucked into Dorsoduro with alpine-looking timber sheds because the boatbuilders came down from Cadore. Gondolas are pulled out and turned over on the slipway across the water from the fondamenta, which is the closest most people get to seeing how an asymmetric boat rowed by one standing oarsman is actually put together.
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Burano - the painted island in the north lagoon
scenic culture artsFishermen's houses in saturated blue, ox-blood and green along a handful of canals, a leaning bell tower, and a lacemaking tradition that once supplied European courts and now survives in a small museum and a few working hands. The local boat gets you there from the northern quays, and Torcello is a short hop further on.
Best areas to stay in Venice
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
San Marco
First-time visitors $$$Postcard Venice, grandest and busiest
Explore hotels in San Marco →
Dorsoduro
Art and evenings $$Art museums, students, sunlit southern quays
Explore hotels in Dorsoduro →
Cannaregio
Better value $Residential canals, the Ghetto, evening bars
Explore hotels in Cannaregio →
Castello
Quiet stays $$Quiet eastern end, gardens and shipyard
Explore hotels in Castello →
San Polo and Santa Croce
Food and markets $$Market district, central and well connected
Explore hotels in San Polo and Santa Croce →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Venice
Getting to & around Venice
Getting there
Fly into Marco Polo on the mainland edge, then a bus to Piazzale Roma or a water bus straight into the city; nothing on wheels goes any further.
Flight
Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)
On the lagoon shore about 13 km north of the historic centre. Express buses cross the causeway to Piazzale Roma in roughly 20-25 minutes, which is the fast and simple option; Alilaguna water buses leave from a jetty a walk or short travelator ride from the terminal and take around an hour and a quarter to Murano, the Fondamente Nove quays or St Mark's, depending on the line. Private water taxis do the same trip much faster and cost a great deal more. Note that many low-cost flights land instead at Treviso, about 40 km inland, with a coach connection of a little over an hour to Piazzale Roma.
Train
Venezia Santa Lucia
High-speed services run in from Milan in around two and a half hours, Florence in about two, Rome in three and a half to four. Stay on until Santa Lucia, which is on the island at the head of the Grand Canal: Venezia Mestre, the stop before, is on the mainland and a common and annoying mistake.
Coach
Piazzale Roma
Intercity and airport coaches all terminate at Piazzale Roma, the one square in Venice that vehicles can reach. From the bus bays it is a vaporetto stop, a taxi pontoon or a walk over the Calatrava bridge to the station.
Drive
Tronchetto
The road causeway ends at the multi-storey garages at Piazzale Roma and on Tronchetto island, and that is the end of driving. Leave the car there for the whole stay; the People Mover and the waterbuses take it from there.
Cruise
Marittima and Marghera
The largest ships are no longer allowed through the Giudecca canal past St Mark's and berth instead at the industrial port at Marghera, with a shuttle transfer in. Smaller vessels still use the Marittima terminal beside Tronchetto.
Getting around
Vaporetto
The public waterbus network and the backbone of the city. Line 1 stops everywhere along the Grand Canal, line 2 runs faster via the Giudecca canal, the 4 and 5 circle the island, and line 12 goes north to Murano, Burano and Torcello from the Fondamente Nove quays.
TBC
Walking
The real way to move: you can cross the whole historic centre in about an hour if you never take a wrong turn, which you will. Yellow signs point to San Marco, Rialto and Ferrovia, every bridge has steps, and phone navigation is unreliable in the narrow lanes.
Free
Traghetto
Stripped-back gondolas that ferry people straight across the Grand Canal at a few fixed points between the bridges, which are far apart. Locals cross standing up. It is by far the cheapest way to sit in a gondola, for about two minutes.
TBC
Water taxi
Sleek varnished launches that go door to door, luggage and all. Much the fastest way to move, and comfortably the most expensive thing you can do on the water here.
TBC
People Mover
A short automated shuttle linking the Tronchetto car parks with the cruise terminal and Piazzale Roma, useful if you have arrived by car and are hauling bags.
TBC
Day trips from Venice
Murano, Burano and Torcello
Full dayLagoon islands
Three islands on one boat line and three different places. Murano has been the glass furnaces since the Republic moved them off the main island to stop fires, with a glass museum and a basilica floor of twelfth-century mosaic. Burano is the painted fishermen's houses and the lace. Torcello, settled first and now nearly empty, keeps a cathedral with a wall-sized Byzantine Last Judgment and a stone seat called Attila's throne.
Getting there
ferry | walk
About 40 min by waterbus from Fondamente Nove to Murano, roughly an hour on to Burano
Padua
Full dayUniversity city
The closest serious city, and the reason to go is Giotto: the Scrovegni Chapel is painted top to bottom by him, entry is by timed slot through a dehumidifying chamber, and it books out. Beyond that a pilgrim basilica holding St Anthony, an anatomical theatre in the old university where Galileo taught, the oldest academic botanical garden in the world, and the enormous elliptical square of the Prato della Valle.
Getting there
train | walk
About 25-45 min by train depending on the service
Verona
Full dayRoman and medieval
A Roman amphitheatre still in weekly use as an opera house sits in the main square, and the city around it is pink Veronese marble: the market bustle of Piazza delle Erbe, the Scaligeri tombs, a castle-museum on the river with a fortified bridge. The Juliet balcony is an invention of the tourist trade and worth about four minutes.
Getting there
train | walk
About 1 hr 10 min by fast train, longer on regional services
Vicenza
Half dayPalladio's town
Palladio rebuilt this town, and it is the best single place to understand why every neoclassical parliament and plantation house on earth looks the way it does. The Teatro Olimpico is the oldest surviving indoor theatre, with a trompe l'oeil street set that has stood since the 1580s, and Villa La Rotonda sits on a low hill just outside the walls.
Getting there
train | walk
About 45-60 min by train
Prosecco hills of Valdobbiadene
Full dayWine country
Steep, oddly folded vine hills between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, farmed by hand because no machine can work the gradients, and listed by UNESCO for exactly that landscape. Cellar doors run the length of the ridge road, with the Cartizze slope at the top of the quality ladder, and a car or a driver is the only practical way to string them together.
Getting there
car | tour
About 1 hr 15 min by car north, or a guided tour from the city
A little history of Venice
Venice began as a refuge. When the Roman order on the mainland broke down under successive invasions, people moved out onto the mud islands of the lagoon, where cavalry could not follow, and built on piles driven into the silt. What began as a marshy bolt-hole became, over several centuries, the Most Serene Republic: an elective oligarchy headed by a doge, hedged about with committees precisely so that no single family could take the state, and pointed entirely at seaborne trade.
At its height the Republic ran a chain of ports and islands down the Adriatic and across the eastern Mediterranean, minted a gold coin the whole region trusted, and turned its shipyard into something close to a production line. Constantinople was its market and, in 1204, its victim. The long decline began when Atlantic routes opened and the Ottomans closed the east, and the state finally ended without a fight when Napoleon arrived in 1797. Austrian rule, then unification with Italy, then a rail and road causeway that turned an island city into a peninsula, and finally mass tourism: the resident population of the historic centre has fallen below fifty thousand, and the argument over what the city is for is now as constant as the tides.
Traditional founding date of the city, taken as the moment mainlanders settled the lagoon islands in numbers.
Merchants smuggle the body of St Mark out of Alexandria; the basilica is begun to house it and the winged lion becomes the state emblem.
Venice steers the Fourth Crusade into sacking Constantinople under Doge Enrico Dandolo, taking the bronze horses and much of the loot still on show.
The Serrata closes the Great Council to a fixed list of patrician families, locking in the constitution that lasts five centuries.
The Republic confines Jewish residents to the foundry island in Cannaregio, creating the first ghetto and the word for it.
Plague kills roughly a third of the population; the city vows the church of Santa Maria della Salute in return for deliverance.
Napoleon ends the Republic; the last doge abdicates and the thousand-year state simply votes itself out of existence.
After decades of Austrian rule and a failed revolt, Venice joins the Kingdom of Italy.
The campanile in the main square collapses into a heap of rubble; it is rebuilt as it was, where it was, and reopens a decade later.
The great November flood puts water most of two metres above normal through the city and triggers an international conservation effort.
La Fenice burns to a shell; the reconstruction takes until 2003.
The MOSE flood barriers at the three lagoon mouths are raised against a high tide for the first time.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F / L
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+39
Mobile network & SIM card
Get an eSIM before you fly
A Italy eSIM installs in minutes and works the moment you switch off flight mode. No SIM swap, no roaming bill.
FAQs about Venice
▸ When is the best time to visit Venice?
Spring and early autumn. March through June and September into October give mild days for walking a city you can only cross on foot, with the light on the water at its best in the shoulder weeks. High summer is hot and humid and at maximum crowd, and winter is cold, damp and atmospheric, with the highest tides but also the emptiest streets.
▸ How many days do you need in Venice?
Three or four. Two days cover the main square, the Grand Canal and one or two of the great collections; the third is what buys you the lagoon islands, and the fourth lets you spend a morning simply walking a sestiere with no destination, which is when the place actually lands.
▸ Is it worth staying overnight rather than day-tripping in?
Yes, and it is the single biggest difference you can make to the trip. Venice runs on a daily tide of arrivals that peaks in the middle of the day and drains by early evening. Guests who stay get the early mornings and the nights, which is a quiet, lamp-lit, largely local city, and is not the same place at all.
▸ What is acqua alta, and will it wreck a visit?
It is the seasonal high tide, mostly between autumn and early spring, when water pushes up through the drains and covers the lowest ground, the main square first. It is predicted in advance, lasts a few hours around the peak and then drains away; raised walkways go up on the main routes and rubber boots appear in every shop window. Since the lagoon barriers came into use the extreme events are far rarer.
▸ How do you get around Venice?
On foot for most things and on the waterbuses for the rest. There are no cars, no bikes and no scooters in the historic centre, every bridge has steps, and a rolling waterbus pass is worth it once you are making more than a couple of trips a day or heading out to the islands. Pack light and expect to carry your bag up and over bridges.
▸ Is a gondola ride worth it?
As a piece of theatre, yes, and the rate is set by the city rather than haggled, so the main variables are the route and the hour. Ask for the quiet back canals rather than the Grand Canal, go at dusk, and skip the serenade. If you only want the sensation of standing in one, the traghetto ferries across the Grand Canal do it in two minutes for a token fare.
▸ Is Venice expensive?
Yes, by Italian standards, and everything you buy has been delivered by boat and handcart, which shows up in the bill. The reliable savings are structural rather than clever: eat standing at bacari instead of sitting down, stay in Cannaregio or Castello rather than beside the main square, drink the house wine, and treat the waterbus as your sightseeing boat.
▸ Do day visitors have to book or pay to enter Venice?
The city has been running an access charge for day trippers on the busiest spring and summer dates, booked online in advance with a code to show. Overnight guests are exempt, but the rules and the dates have changed with each season, so check the current position before you plan a day visit.
▸ What is Venice known for?
Canals instead of streets, a thousand years of independent maritime empire, Byzantine and Gothic architecture that exists nowhere else in Europe, and the Venetian school of painting, which stayed largely where it was made. Plus the lagoon crafts: glass on one island, lace on another.
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