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Antico Cimitero Israelitico
A few hundred metres south of the Chiesa di San Nicolò is what remains of the Antico Cimitero Israelitico (Old Jewish Cemetery). In 1386, Venice's Jews acquired the right to bury their dead on a strip of the Lido that started near the Chiesa di San Nicolò and extended down here. It fell into disuse in the 18th century (when the Nuovo Cimitero Israelitico opened nearby). The bulk of the tombstones were discovered by construction workers in the late 19th century.
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Arsenale
For centuries the crenellated walls of the Arsenale hid from view the feverish, infernal activity of the city's shipwrights, busy churning out galleys, merchant ships and other vessels at a pace unmatched anywhere in Europe. Thousands of arsenaloti (Arsenale workers), each specialising in certain trades, beavered away in assembly-line fashion hundreds of years before the industrial era.
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Basilica Di San Marco
The Basilica di San Marco is at once a remarkable place of worship and a singular declaration of commercial-imperial might. Building work on the first chapel to honour the freshly arrived corpse of St Mark began in 828, but the result disappeared in a fire in 932. The next version was demolished when, in 1063, Doge Domenico Contarini decided it was poor in comparison to grander Romanesque churches in mainland cities.
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Ca' d'Oro
This magnificent 15th-century Gothic structure got its name (Golden House) from the gilding that once decorated the facade. The building now houses the Galleria Franchetti, an impressive collection of bronzes, tapestries and paintings from the 15th and 16th centuries. A big incentive for visiting is the panorama from the balconies over the Grand Canal.
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Ca' Pesaro
Home to the Galleria d'Arte Moderna (Modern Art Gallery) since 1902, the mighty Ca' Pesaro was designed for one of Venice's senior families by Longhena, in a muted baroque style much influenced by the Renaissance ideas of Sansovino, and finished in 1710 by Antonio Gaspari, after Longhena's death. He died worrying about the mounting construction bills!
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Ca' Rezzonico - Museo del Settecento Veneziano
This superb 17th- to 18th-century mansion, facing the Grand Canal, is the Museum of the 18th Century. Designed by Longhena and completed in the 1750s by Massari, it was home to several notables over the years, including the poet Robert Browning, who died here. The grand residence holds a collection of 18th-century art and furniture, and provides a rare insight into how the Venetian nobility lived towards the end of La Serenissima.
Read more about Ca' Rezzonico - Museo del Settecento Veneziano
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Casa Di Goldoni
Venice's greatest playwright, Carlo Goldoni, came kicking and screaming into the world here in 1707. The 15th-century Gothic-era house is worth a quick visit, and Goldoni fans will find a host of material on his life and works. The entrance is the most striking part of the house, with its quiet courtyard, private well and stairway in Istrian stone.
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Cattedrale Di San Pietro Di Castello
Although overshadowed by the Basilica di San Marco, this church, on the far-removed island of San Pietro, was Venice's cathedral from 1451 to 1807. Indeed the island was among the first to be inhabited.
In 775, the original church was the seat of a bishopric. Its present appearance is basically a post-Palladian job, taking its cue in part from Giudecca's Chiesa del Redentore, with a monumental façade dating to the end of the 16th century.
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Cattedrale Di Santa Maria Assunta
The island's ancient Veneto-Byzantine cathedral, Venice's first, was founded in the 7th century. What you see today dates from the first expansion of the church in 824 and rebuilding in 1008, making it about the oldest Venetian monument to have remained relatively untampered with.
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Chiesa Dei Carmini
What remains of the original 14th-century Byzantine and then Gothic church sits a little uneasily beside the richer, and perhaps less digestible, ornament of the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the paintings on view are several works by Cima da Conegliano and Lorenzo Lotto.
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Chiesa Dei Gesuati
Built for the Dominicans by a team of architects under Giorgio Massari from 1726 to 1735, this imposing church is more properly known as the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Rosario. It contains three ceiling frescoes by Tiepolo telling the story of St Dominic - the appearance to the saint of the Virgin Mary, the institution of the rosary (hence the church's official name) and St Dominic in glory.
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Chiesa Dei Scalzi
Virtually next to the train station, this is a rare baroque extravagance. Longhena designed the church, but the façade was done by Giuseppe Sardi. The abundance of columns and statues in niches is a deliberate echo of the particularly extravagant baroque style often employed in Rome. The Carmelites, who had moved here from Rome several years before, specifically requested that it be so. Damaged frescoes by Tiepolo appear in the vaults of two of the side chapels.
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Chiesa Dei SS Giovanni E Paolo
This huge Gothic church, founded by the Dominicans, was begun in 1333, but it was not consecrated until 1430. The vast interior is divided simply into an enormous central nave and two aisles, separated by graceful, soaring arches. Three chapels, each of different dimensions, have been tacked - it seems almost willy-nilly - onto the church's southern flank. Ruskin would have approved of this architectural wilfulness!
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Chiesa Dei SS Maria E Donato
This is a fascinating example of Veneto-Byzantine architecture. Founded in the 7th century and rebuilt 500 years later, the church was originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was rededicated to San Donato after his bones were brought here from the Greek island of Cephalonia, along with those of a dragon he had supposedly killed (four of the 'dragon' bones hang behind the altar).
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Chiesa Del Redentore
With the passing of a bout of plague in 1577, the Senato commissioned Palladio to design a church of thanksgiving. The following year, the doge, members of the Senato and a host of citizens made the first pilgrimage of thanksgiving, crossing from Zattere on a pontoon bridge of boats and rafts.
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Chiesa Dell'arcangelo Raffaele
The two towers of this stout church can be seen from all over southern Dorsoduro. The church was initially raised in the 7th century and for a long time was the focus of community life for the quarter's fishing families. The present church dates to the 17th century. The series of paintings inside above the main entrance has been attributed to the Guardi brothers, but no-one is sure which one - the vedutista (landscape artist) Francesco or his lesser-known elder brother Gian Antonio (1699-1760).
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Chiesa della Madonna dell'Orto
Architecture fans should find the exterior of this church intriguing. Elements of Romanesque remain (the inner arch over the main entrance, for instance) in what is largely a 14th-century Gothic structure in brick. That changes were made a century later is clear from the series of statues in niches above the two lower wings of the façade and from the triangular finish at the top.
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Chiesa Delle Zitelle
Designed by Palladio in the late 16th century, the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Presentazione, known as the Zitelle, was a church and hospice for poor young women ( zitelle means 'old maids', which is presumably what many of them remained). It is now used for conferences and is only sporadically open.
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Chiesa Di San Bartolomeo
Long the parish church of the German community related to the nearby Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the church has undergone numerous reincarnations. Evidence suggests there was a church on this spot in the 9th century, but what you see today is the result of reworking in the wake of the building of the Ponte di Rialto and later changes. Much of the artwork inside is signed by Palma il Giovane.
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Chiesa Di San Domenico
Built in 1745 on the site of an earlier Dominican church. The site is a little island unto itself and the church's main claim to fame is the painting San Paolo (St Paul), said to be Vittore Carpaccio's last known work. The bell tower, raised in 1200, is the sole remnant of the original structure.
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Chiesa Di San Francesco Della Vigna
Palladio was responsible for the high-and-mighty façade of this Franciscan church, which takes its name from the vineyard that once thrived on the site. The remainder was designed by Sansovino. The bell tower at the back seems to all intents and purposes the twin of the Campanile di San Marco. Inside, just to the left of the main door, is a triptych of saints by Antonio Vivarini.
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Chiesa Di San Geremia
This otherwise uninspiring 18th-century church contains the body of St Lucy (Santa Lucia), who was martyred in Syracuse in AD 304. Her body was stolen by Venetian merchants from Constantinople in 1204 and moved to San Geremia after the Palladian church of Santa Lucia was demolished in the 19th century to make way for the train station.
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Chiesa Di San Giacomo Dell'orio
Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio is graced by the modest outline of one of Venice's few good examples of Romanesque architecture. The initial 9th-century church was replaced in 1225. The main Gothic addition (14th century) is the remarkable wooden ceiling a carena di nave . Among the intriguing jumble of works of art are a Byzantine column in green marble, a 13th-century baptismal font and a Lombard pulpit perched on a 6th-century column from Ravenna.
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Chiesa Di San Giorgio Dei Greci
Greek Orthodox refugees who fled to Venice from the Ottoman Turks were allowed to raise a church, 'St George of the Greeks', here in 1536. It is intriguing above all for the richness of its Byzantine icons, iconostasis and other artworks. The separate, slender bell tower, completed in 1603, began to lean right from the start.
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Chiesa Di San Giorgio Maggiore
Palladio's grand church occupies one of the most prominent positions in Venice and, although it inspired mixed reactions among the architect's contemporaries (not everyone was fond of the classical tones and indeed Palladio was denied many major commissions in Venice), it had a significant influence on late Renaissance architecture. Built between 1565 and 1580, it is his most imposing structure in the city.
