Sights in Venice
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Basilica di San Marco
Creating Venice's signature architectural wonder took nearly 800 years of painstaking labour and one saintly barrel of lard. Legend has it that in AD 828, wily Venetian merchants smuggled St Mark's corpse out of Egypt in a barrel of pork fat to avoid inspection by Muslim customs authorities. Church authorities in Rome took a dim view of Venice's tendency to glorify itself and God in the same breath, but Venice defiantly created the basilica in its own cosmopolitan image, with Byzantine onion-bulb domes, a Greek cross layout, a Gothic rosette window and Egyptian marble walls. The roped-off circuit of the church is free and takes about 15 minutes. For entry, dress modestly…
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Palazzo Ducale
Don't be fooled by its genteel Gothic elegance: underneath all that lacy pink cladding, the doges' palace flexes serious muscle. The seat of Venice's government for nearly seven centuries, this powerhouse survived wars, conspiracies and economic crashes, and was cleverly restored by Antonio da Ponte (who also designed Ponte di Rialto) after a 1577 fire.
Exterior
Outside, the palazzo (mansion) mixes business with pleasure, capping a graceful colonnade with medieval capitals depicting key Venetian guilds. Facing the piazza, Zane and Bartolomeo Bon's 1443 Porta della Carta (Paper Door) served as a bulletin board for government decrees.
Courtyard
Sansovino's brawny statues of…
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Peggy Guggenheim Collection
After tragically losing her father on the Titanic, heiress Peggy Guggenheim befriended Dadaists, dodged Nazis and amassed avant-garde works by 200 modern artists at her palatial home on the Grand Canal. Peggy's Palazzo Venier dei Leoni became a modernist shrine, chronicling surrealism, Italian futurism and abstract expressionism, with a subtext of Peggy's romantic pursuits – the collection includes key works by Peggy's ex-husband Max Ernst as well as Jackson Pollock, who was among Peggy's many rumoured lovers. Peggy collected according to her own convictions rather than for prestige or style, so her collection includes folk art and lesser-known artists alongside…
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Gallerie dell'Accademia
Don't be fooled by Palladio's serene expansions for the former Santa Maria della Carità convent: these galleries contain more murderous intrigue, forbidden romance, shameless politicking and near-riots than the most outrageous Venetian parties. To guide you through the ocular onslaught, visits are loosely organised by style, theme and painter from the 14th to the 18th centuries, though recent restorations have temporarily shuffled round some of the masterpieces.
Rooms 1–5
Early collection highlights include Paolo Veneziano's c 1350 Coronation of Mary (room 1), which shows Jesus bestowing the crown on his mother with a gentle pat on the head. For sheer, shimmering gore,…
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St Mark's Square
Napoleon dubbed it the 'finest drawing room in Europe', and visitors and pigeons alike have been flocking here for centuries to strut and crow. There is a constant carnival atmosphere thanks to the cacophony of duelling cafe orchestras, cooing pigeons, and constant traffic of waiters serving alfresco diners.
Now that most visitors arrive in Venice via the railway station, the magical symbolism of the waterside Piazzetta San Marco has to a great extent been lost.
The piazzetta's two columns bear emblems of the city's patron saints: the winged lion of St Mark and the figure of St Theodore. From the Campanile (bell tower), you can enjoy breathtaking views. St Mark's Square…
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Museo della Musica
Housed in the restored neoclassical Chiesa di San Maurizio, this collection of rare and curious 17th- to 19th-century instruments is accompanied by informative panels on the life and times of Venice’s Antonio Vivaldi. To hear these instruments in action, check out the kiosk with early-music CDs and concert tickets for Interpreti Veneziani, who fund this museum and play museum-piece instruments with modern verve around the corner at San Vidal.
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La Pietà
Originally called Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione but fondly nicknamed La Pietà, this light-filled and harmonious church designed by Giorgio Massari is best known for its association with the composer Vivaldi, who was concertmaster here in the early 18th century. Though the current church was built after Vivaldi’s death, its acoustic-friendly oval shape honours his memory, and it is still regularly used as a concert hall. Be sure to look up: on the ceiling, Giambattista Tiepolo’s gravity-defying Coronation of the Virgin seems to open up the church to the vast heavens themselves.
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Giudecca 795
Founded to promote local artists of all kinds, this quirky and welcoming gallery displays (and sells) a wide range of works by both established and young artists, most of whom have a strong connection with Venice itself. There is also a shop attached with quirky, Venice-related keepsakes.
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Arsenale
Founded in 1104, the Arsenale soon became the greatest medieval shipyard in Europe, home to 300 shipping companies employing up to 16,000 people. Capable of turning out a new galley in a day, it is considered a forerunner of mass industrial production. Though it's closed to the public most of the year, arty types invade the shipyard during Venice's art and architecture Biennales, when it hosts exhibitions and special events.
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Museo Ebraico & Jewish Ghetto
This area in Venice was once a getto (foundry) on an island away from the main area of Cannaregio to contain the risk of fire – but its role as the designated Jewish quarter from the 16th to 18th centuries gave the word a whole new meaning. In accordance with the Venetian Republic’s 1516 decree, Jewish artisans and lenders stocked and funded Venice’s commercial enterprises by day, while at night and on Christian holidays, they were restricted to the gated island of the Ghetto Nuovo. If you scan the top floors of the buildings ringing the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, you can spot three synagogues, or schole (literally, ‘schools’), distinguished from the residential housing…
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Rialto
Rivoalto (later contracted to Rialto), the highest spot in the collection of islets that formed the nucleus of the lagoon city, was one of the areas of first settlement - although the more active part was initially on the San Marco side of the bridge. The San Polo side slowly gained the ascendance and became the centre of trade and banking for the Republic. This is where dosh traded hands, voyages were bankrolled, insurance was arranged and news (or gossip) was exchanged.
The area continues to buzz with the activity of the daily produce and fish markets - why break the habit of 700 years? The Fabbriche Vecchie (Old Buildings), along the Ruga degli Orefici, were created by…
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Fondazione Giorgio Cini
A defunct naval academy has been cleverly converted into a shipshape gallery for the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, preserving the original double-height timber ceiling and going for a weatherbeaten-high-design look with luminous stairs in glass and rusted iron. The gallery hosts high-profile international and Italian shows, ranging from a mind-bending avant-garde Japanese typography show to a retrospective of Venice’s own poetic abstractionist, Giuseppe Santomaso – including his Letters to Palladio, paintings of envelopes with Palladian proportions. Behind Palladio’s grand church extend the grounds of the former monastery with a long history, beginning in the 10th century…
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Scuola Grande di San Rocco
Everyone wanted the commission to paint this building dedicated to the patron saint of the plague-stricken, so Tintoretto cheated: instead of producing sketches like rival Veronese, he gifted a splendid ceiling panel of patron St Roch, knowing it couldn't be refused or matched by other artists.
Upstairs
Old Testament scenes Tintoretto painted from 1575 to 1587 for the Sala Grande Superiore ceiling upstairs read like a modern graphic novel: you can almost hear the swoop! overhead as an angel dives down to feed ailing Elijah. Against the shadowy backdrop of the Black Death, eerie lightning-bolt illumination strikes Tintoretto's subjects in New Testament wall scenes.
Downstairs
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Cattedrale di San Pietro di Castello
Unlikely though it may seem, this sleepy church on the far-flung island of San Pietro served as Venice’s cathedral from 1451 to 1807. Despite its glamour and central location, the Basilica di San Marco was ‘merely’ the doge’s chapel. The island of San Pietro (originally known as Olivolo) was among the first to be inhabited in Venice, and the original church here was the seat of a bishopric as early as 775. The present church is an almost-but-not-quite Palladio design. Palladio had been awarded the contract in the 1550s, but the death of the patriarch (Venice’s version of a bishop) led to a project hiatus that lasted beyond the genius’s own demise. Palladio’s successors…
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Chiesa dei SS Giovanni e Paolo
Who does brick Gothic best? When the Dominicans undertook the 100-year effort to build Zanipolo in 1333 to rival the Franciscans’ Chiesa diSanta MariaGloriosa dei Frari, the church stirred passions and partisanship more common to Serie A football than architecture. Both have red-brick facades with high-contrast detailing in white stone. But since Zanipolo’s facade remains unfinished, the Frari won a decisive early decision over Zanipolo with its soaring grace – and with Titian’s Assunta altarpiece front and centre, the Frari seemed impossible to surpass. Over the centuries, Zanipolo may have at least tied the score with the sheer scale and variety of its…
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Giardini Pubblici & Biennale
Modern angles and swing sets jutting out amid the greenery signal that you’re entering the Giardini, home to Venice’s Art Biennale. During the Art Biennale’s June–September run in odd years, curators and connoisseurs swarming national showcases ranging from Geza Rintel Maroti’s 1909 Secessionist-era Hungarian Pavilion, glittering with mosaics, to Peter Cox’s 1988 boxy yellow Australian Pavilion, frequently mistaken for a construction trailer. Carlo Scarpa contributed in one way or another from 1948 to 1972, trying to make the best of Duilio Torres’ Fascist 1932 Italian Pavilion (now the Palazzo delle Esposizione ) and building the entrance courtyard, the…
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Palazzo Grimani
Just south of Campo Santa Maria Formosa, this light-filled palazzo has finally reopened to the public after nearly three decades. Built in the 1500s by Doge Antonio Grimani to house his remarkable collection of Graeco-Roman antiquities (most of which are now in Museo Correr), the lovingly restored palazzo houses high-calibre temporary exhibitions.
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Museo Storico Navale
Maritime madness spans four storeys and 42 rooms at this museum of Venice’s seafaring history, featuring scale models of the Venetian-built vessels as well as Peggy Guggenheim’s not-so-minimalist gondola. On the ground floor, you’ll find sprawling galleries of fearsome weaponry – cannons, blunderbusses, swords and sabres – with hardly any noticeable bloodstains. These big guns were rarely needed in Venice itself, since the shallows of the lagoon provided the city’s best protection against invaders. Also on the ground floor you’ll find 17th-century dioramas of forts and ports. They illustrate the incredible span of Venetian power across the Adriatic and…
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Rialto Market
Cutting-edge restaurants worldwide are catching on to a secret that Rialto markets have kept out in the open for 700 years: food tastes better when it’s fresh, seasonal and local. More vital to Venetian cuisine than any top chef are the fishmongers at the Pescaria. This is any foodie’s first stop in Venice to admire Venetian specialities in the making: glistening mountains of moscardini (baby octopus), crabs ranging from tiny moeche (soft-shell crabs) to granseole (spider crab), and inky seppie (squid) of all sizes. Sustainable fishing practices are not a new idea at the Pescaria, where marble plaques show regulations set centuries ago for minimum allowable sizes for…
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Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi
High Renaissance meets high risk at this 16th-century palace, which for centuries has served as the city’s casino. This might seem like an odd place to convalesce, but composer Richard Wagner was no stranger to drama, and chose to retreat here in 1882–83 to recover from an apparent bout of heart trouble and complete the 20-year effort on this Ring cycle. He succeeded, only to die of a heart attack here within a few months. You can wander into the ground-floor area during casino hours, but unless you’re staying in a high-end hotel that offers free passes, you’ll have to don formal attire and pay to see the gaming rooms. Three of the salons Wagner occupied have been set…
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Riva degli Schiavoni
Stretching west from the Palazzo Ducale in San Marco all the way to the city’s eastern edges, this paved boardwalk is one of the world’s great promenades.
Schiavoni (literally, ‘Slavs’) refers to fishermen from Dalmatia (a region roughly equivalent to the former Yugoslavia) who arrived in Venice in medieval times and found this a handy spot for casting their nets. For centuries, vessels would dock and disembark here, right into the heart of Venice – if they could find a parking space between galleons and gondolas. A Rosetta Stone’s worth of languages were spoken here, as traders, dignitaries, sailors and servants arrived from ports around the Mediterranean and beyond.…
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Palazzo Querini Stampalia
The outer shell of this palazzo dates from the first half of the 16th century, but the inside could not be more surprising: a 1963 bridge, 1940s entrance and garden, and a 1959 1st-floor library all designed by Scarpa, with noteworthy 1990s embellishments by Mario Botta.
Enter through the Botta-designed bookshop to get a free pass to the cafe and its garden. Design-savvy drinkers take their spritz with a twist of high modernism in the Carlo Scarpa–designed courtyard garden or the Mario Botta–designed Qcoffee Bar.
Alternately, buy a ticket and head upstairs to the 2nd-floor Museo della Fondazione Querini Stampalia. The museum occupies a series of sumptuous,…
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I Frari
This soaring Italian-brick Gothic church features marquetry choir stalls, Canova's pyramid mausoleum, Bellini's achingly sweet Madonna with Child triptych in the sacristy, and Longhena's creepy Doge Pesaro funereal monument hoisted by burly slaves bursting from ragged clothes like Invisible Hulks – yet visitors are inevitably drawn to the small altarpiece.
This is Titian's 1518 Assumption, in which a radiant Madonna in a Titian-red cloak reaches heavenward, steps onto a cloud and escapes this mortal coil. Both inside and outside the painting, onlookers gasp and point out at the sight; Titian outdid himself here, upstaging his own 1526 Pesaro Altarpiece near the entry.…
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Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna
Designed and built by Jacopo Sansovino with a facade by Palladio – his first church commission – this enchanting Franciscan church is one of Venice’s most underappreciated attractions. The Madonna positively glows in Bellini’s 1507 Madonna and Saints in the Capella Santa, just off the flower-carpeted cloister courtyard, while swimming angels and strutting birds steal the scene in the delightful Virgin Enthroned, by Antonio da Negroponte c 1460–70.
Palladio and the Madonna are tough acts to follow, but father-son sculptors Pietro and Tullio Lombardo make their own mark with their 15th-century marble reliefs that recount the lives of Christ and an assortment of…
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Chiesa di San Zaccaria
When 15th-century Venetian girls preferred sailors to saints, they often had to do a penitential stint at the convent adjoining this remarkable church. A hotchpotch of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and baroque, it represents centuries of the wealth of disgruntled parents. Don't miss Bellini's melancholy Virgin or Tiepolo's version of the flight into Egypt via Venetian-style boat. For €1, you can also visit hidden chapels and the waterlogged, 10th-century foundations.
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