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Imagina Café
A cheerful bar with high-backed red chairs and bright lights, Imagina Café is a bar with artistic pretensions. The walls are always hung with regularly changing paintings and/or photography, lending some visual interest to a prosecco stop.
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Improntacafé
A snazzy snack bar and restaurant by day, this place comes into its own as a be-seen-in wine bar with food in the evening. Sidle up to the bar for a goblet of fine Italian wine by the glass (around €3 .50 to around €4 ) or opt for a light sit-down meal and order a bottle!
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L'olandese Volante
The Flying Dutchman is basically a UK-style pub that attracts a curious mix of local students out for a beery night and tourists feeling a little nostalgic for…a beery night. The terrace gets vaguely rowdy on summer evenings.
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Margaret Duchamp
This is a highly popular spot for a spritz and chat into the early hours. It attracts a hip mix of young wannabes and Biennale types with shades - you can't blame them, as you get the afternoon sun shining straight through your cocktail glass.
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Metrò Venezia
This is basically a gay sauna, with various sauna and massage rooms but also a bar. Rather than a dark room it has a dark labyrinth! There's a deal for free entry into the Flexo Bar in Padua after your sauna here.
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Mojito Bar
A tiny slice of Caribbean on the Lido, run by traveller-friendly twin brothers Andrea and Giovanni, this place (known affectionately as il baretto , the little bar) is the happening bar in the summer months. When nothing else is going on in, say, October, this is the place to be for beers, cocktails with fresh fruit (around €5 .50) and Latin sounds.
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Muro Vino E Cucina
A metropolitan touch to Venice's bar scene, this place has brought some boisterous nightlife joy to the market squares of Rialto. Spread over two storeys looking over the markets, the downstairs level is a bustling designer bar while upstairs, you can eat reasonably well. Folks spread out into the square with their tipples.
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Orange
Huge sheet-glass windows dominate the southern end of the campo . The colour of an Aperol spritz inside, the bar appeals to fashionistas and other narcissists. In summer, skip the lurid bar and head out back to the pleasant garden or the ringside terrace upstairs.
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Osteria agli Ormesini
Oodles of wine and 120 types of bottled beer in one knockabout little place? Perhaps you should get along to this osteria . It's something of a student haunt, and tipplers spill out onto the fondamenta to enjoy their grog.
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Osteria Alla Bifora
Carved out of an exquisite 12th-century building, this is an enticing option for a few glasses of red over an enormous tagliere (platter) of cold meats and cheese. Franco, the owner, painstakingly unveiled the centuries-old timber ceiling of what had long been a butcher's. At the back is the bifora , a Gothic window (now walled in) that is unusual for being at ground level. Franco's rules: no coffee and no pictures on the brick walls.
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Osteria Da Codroma
Popular with students, Codroma has been a favoured meeting place of workers, artists, musicians and just about everyone else in this part of town for more than 100 years. It's a knockabout spot, where people crowd in at timber benches and tables for an ombra and snacks.
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Pachuka
The most reliable of the Lido's summertime dance spots, this place right on the beach works year-round as a snack bar and pizzeria, but summer weekend nights it cranks up as a bit of a beachside dance club, too. A shuttle bus operates from midnight to every 20 minutes between the club and the Lido vaporetto stop.
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Piccolo Mondo
This teensy disco and bar is a bit of a throwback but perfectly all right in its own fashion. It pulls a strangely mixed crowd of foreigners and locals in search of that late night frisson. Many Venetians would deny ever setting foot in the place, but wander by late at night and you'll find a handful. Otherwise, it's anything from loud young North American students to late-night loungers on the pull. Drinks cost around €10 .
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Pub Tortuga
During the day this is a fairly standard café-bar, where you can pop by for a coffee, a beer and perhaps a bruschetta. At night it livens up as local punters slip in to sample the various imported beers on tap and, occasionally, a little live music. It's a warm little island in this lonely Cannaregio corner.
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Sacro E Profano
Known as Da Valerio to regulars and hidden beneath the porticoes of what was once the goldsmiths' district, this tiny cubicle of a bar is another good spot to continue a Rialto night out. Try the cicheti and more substantial dishes (like the lasagne) or just sip wine and cocktails to the chilled ambient music. It's something of a hangout for artists and bohemians.
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Tarnowska's
Watch your step as you pop down a couple of steps into this elegant hotel bar (locals know it as La Contessa, the Countess), ideal for a cocktail or postprandial brandy. With its polished tile floors, it spreads into several separate spaces. Alongside those having an animated chat over lovingly prepared tall drinks are other folks beavering away at computers, for this is one of those rare things in Venice, a wi-fi spot. The Russian Countess Maria Tarnowska, it is said, had one of her lovers assassinated in this very place.
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Taverna da Baffo
Named after Casanova's licentious poet pal Giorgio Baffo and lined with his rhymes in praise of 'the round arse' and other parts of the female body, this bar has a young, chirpy feel. In summer the tables outside are an especially pleasant spot to sip a spritz or two, and the imported beers are good as well.
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Teamo
Every now and then you get the feeling that savvy new wind is blowing through Venice, bringing a modern, sophisticated buzz to some of its quiet corners. The high back leather padding along the bench against the wall, the high stools, the hip choice of music, make this a very un-Venetian little drink stopover. You can eat as well. But wouldn't it be marvellous if you could sip cocktails here at ?
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Un Mondo Di Vino
It's standing room only in this postage-stamp-sized wine bar where you can sample from a long list of wines and a bar-load of snacks. It gets lively with the chatter of locals and the clinking of glasses. Try a cheese platter (around €8 ). Wine by the glass goes for around €2 to €3 depending on your tipple.
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Venice Casino
If you feel that quantity is more important than ambience, then this might be the casino for you. It's Italy's premier mainland gambling house and is near the airport. The dress code is casual.
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Vitae
When things around here start to look grim, people converge on this place. On a Friday or Saturday night it's a lively joint for a convivial drink - and one of the few seriously decent options in the San Marco area for a fun-loving, unpretentious crowd. Vitae is also busy by day - it's a popular brunch spot for local office workers - and it's packed for after-work drinks, too.
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Zanzibar
This crooked kiosk that looks set to crumble into the canal provides some great life-theatre entertainment. Pull up a seat on the square and settle in for a few people-watching drinks to the thumping music emanating from the bar.
