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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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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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Fondaco Dei Turchi
This 12th-century mansion belonged to the dukes of Ferrara until it was handed over in 1621 for use as a warehouse and way station for Turkish merchants (who operated in Venice through all the ups and downs of relations between Muslim Turkey and the West). The building now houses the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale (Natural History Museum).
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Galleria d'Arte Moderna
This fine baroque mansion is considered one of the most important on the Grand Canal, started by Longhena and completed in 1710 by Gaspari. Since 1902 it has housed the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, a broad collection that includes pieces by De Chirico, Miró, Chagall, Kandinsky, Klee, Klimt, Moore and others.
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Galleria Di Palazzo Cini
With luck you may get to look at this curious collection of Tuscan intruders. Oddly, the main façade of this 16th-century building looks over the Rio di San Vio rather than the Grand Canal. Spread out over two floors are around 30 works, mostly from the 14th and 15th centuries, including some by Lippi, Piero della Francesca ( Madonna col Bambino ), Botticelli ( Il Giudizio di Paride , or The Judgment of Paris) and Beato Angelico.
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Gallerie dell'Accademia
Long the official arbiter of artistic taste in Venice, the 'Academy' is home to the finest in Venetian old masters, a veritable feast of High Renaissance, baroque and rococo. Although the city is dotted by works of the greats, this one-stop starburst represents a single, intense lesson in the greatness of Venetian high art from the 14th to 18th centuries.
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Libreria Nazionale Marciana
Across Piazzetta San Marco from the Palazzo Ducale lies the gracious form of what Palladio described as the most sumptuous palace ever built. Designed by Jacopo Sansovino in the 16th century, the building occupies the entire west side of the piazzetta and houses the Libreria Nazionale Marciana (National Library of St Mark, aka Biblioteca di San Marco or Libreria Sansoviniana, after its architect) and the Museo Archeologico.
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Museo Correr
Begun by a certain Corsican general as a ballroom but not completed until halfway through the 19th century under Austrian rule, the Ala Napoleonica is home to the Museo Correr, dedicated to the art and history of Venice and loaded with all sorts of fascinating paraphernalia. The museum also gives access to the Museo Archeologico and, beyond, the beautiful Renaissance Libreria Nazionale Marciana.
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Museo Del Merletto
On the top floor of the island's one-time lace school (closed in 1970) are displayed pieces of handiwork little short of mind-boggling in the intricacy of their design. Everything from shawls to tablecloths is on show. Some of the 17th-century pieces, with complex relief detail and clearly the result of painstaking labour, are remarkable.
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Museo Del Vetro
The Glass Museum has some exquisite pieces. The building, set in a peaceful garden, is a grand 15th-century affair that from 1659 until the early 19th century was the seat of the Torcello bishopric (until its dissolution) and then became Murano town hall. The museum was installed here in 1861, mostly on the 1st floor.
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Museo Della Follia
From the 7th to the 17th centuries Benedictine monks had a monastery on San Servolo, bits of which still remain in the former hospital. This has been partly opened as the Museo della Follia. Two intriguing rooms are full of paraphernalia and explanations of the days when being sent to San Servolo was undesirable. In the first room is a series of before/after photos of 19th-century inmates, many of whom were little more than extremely poor folk slightly deranged through bad nutrition and vitamin deficiency.
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Museo Della Musica
Housed in the restored neoclassical Chiesa di San Maurizio, this collection of rare and often very curious instruments spans the 17th to 19th centuries and is accompanied by informative panels on the life and times of Antonio Vivaldi. On sale is a huge range of music by, among others, er, Vivaldi.
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Museo delle Icone
This gallery is dedicated to Orthodox religious art. On display are some 80 works of art and other items. Foremost are two 14th century Byzantine icons, one representing Christ in Glory and the other the Virgin Mary with Child and Apostles. Many items were done by Greeks in Venice and northern Italy.
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Museo Di Torcello
Across the square from the cathedral in the 13th-century Palazzo del Consiglio is this museum dedicated to the island. On the ground floor are some sculptural fragments from the cathedral, a 6th-century holy-water font and a curious display of Byzantine objects from Constantinople. Upstairs, among a series of rather dark religious paintings, many from the workshops of Veronese, are all sorts of odds and ends, including a 7th-century lead seal.
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Museo Diocesano D'arte Sacra
Housed in a former Benedictine monastery dedicated to Sant'Apollonia, this museum has a fairly predictable collection of religious art. More interesting is the exquisite Romanesque cloister you cross in order to get to the museum. It is a rare example of the genre in Venice. The cloister is often open much longer hours than the museum. The building next door was a church until 1906, and now houses exhibition spaces.
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Museo Ebraico & The Jewish Ghetto
A modest collection of Jewish religious silverware can be found at the Jewish Museum. Opened in 1955, it has been enriched down the years with donations of material used in private prayer and to decorate synagogues. The guided tours (in Italian or English; other languages if booked in advance) of the Ghetto and three of its synagogues that leave from the museum are a must, allowing you to enter a unique world.
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Museo Storico Navale
Spread over four floors in a former grain silo, this museum traces the maritime history of the city and of Italy. Models of everything from the bucintoro (the doges' ceremonial barge) to WWII battleships abound. Up on the 3rd floor is a room containing a few gondolas, including Peggy Guggenheim's.
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Ospedaletto
Longhena's baroque Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Derelitti (aka the Ospedaletto, or Little Hospital) is the focal point of a onetime orphanage. The façade is one of the most exuberant bursts of baroque in the city, with giant figures leaning out over the narrow street below. Inside are some fine works by Giambattista Tiepolo and Palma il Giovane.
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Palazzo Fortuny
You'll recognise this building instantly by its two rows of hectafores , each a series of eight connected Venetian-style windows. Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, an eccentric Spanish painter and collector, bought the building at the beginning of the 20th century. He left his works here and, together with another 80 by the Roman artist Virgilio Guidi, they make up the bulk of the Museo Fortuny.
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Palazzo Grassi
Magnates can be a mercurial lot. And French wheeler-dealer and contemporary art collector François Pinault surprised just about everyone in France and Italy when he snapped up the grand Palazzo Grassi in Venice as the central home for his considerable and eclectic collection.
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Palazzo Mocenigo
This mansion belonged to one of the most important families of the Republic. Originally a Gothic pile, it was overhauled in the 17th century and is typical of Venetian patricians' lodgings. The 16th-century philosopher Giordano Bruno was hosted here for a time by the Mocenigo family, who then betrayed him and handed him over to the Inquisition. (He was subsequently tortured and burnt at the stake in Rome for heresy.)
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Palazzo Querini Stampalia
The last of this branch of the Querini family ordained that its mansion should become home to a foundation of the same name, which it has been since the 1860s.
Never judge a book by its cover. The outer shell of this building dates from the first half of the 16th century, but the inside could not be more surprising.
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Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Eccentric millionaire art collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) called the unfinished Palazzo Venier dei Leoni home for 30 years. She left behind, apart from her cherished dogs buried with her in the sculpture garden, a collection representing most of the major art movements of the 20th century. Works by Picasso, Dali and Miro make this an essential visit.
