Other sights in Venice
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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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B
Palazzo Franchetti
Makeover madness hasn’t diminished the essential charms of one of Venice’s most admired Grand Canal palaces. No fewer than three extended Venetian families originally lived under one Gothic roof at this 16th-century mansion, and apparently they didn’t always see eye to eye on decor. When archduke Frederick of Austria snapped up this Gothic palace in the 19th century, he attempted to unify competing styles with a spare, modern makeover. The Franchetti family lived here for decades after independence, and commissioned architect Camillo Boito to reinstall a retro-Gothic look, plus a formal garden and a grand art nouveau staircase. The palace was home to a private bank from 1…
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Galleria
San Marco was officially the doge’s (duke’s) chapel until 1807, and the doge’s far-reaching influence is highlighted by gilt bronze horses in the Galleria, upstairs in the Bascilica di San Marco. Through the Galleria you can access the Loggia dei Cavalli, where reproductions of the bronze horses gallop off the balcony over Piazza San Marco. Note that you’ll need to be dressed modestly (ie knees and shoulders covered) to enter the basilica, and large bags must be left around the corner off Piazzetta San Marco dei Leoni at Ateneo di San Basso, where you’ll find free one-hour baggage storage.
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Palazzo della Mostra del Cinema
A seaside Fascist monument, this rigid airport-terminal structure seems as ill-suited to the playboy Lido as a woolly bathing suit. But once the red carpets are rolled out and the stars arrive for the Venice International Film Festival, it all makes sense: more than a party venue, the ‘palace of cinema’ is a movie-launching platform. But when stripped of its red carpet, C+S Associates’ 2003 ‘Wave’ entrance begs for a skateboard. Next door is the former casino, another blinding-white monstrosity that replaced the original 1527 Palladio-built casino in a regrettable 1930s Fascist building spree.
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C
Il Redentore
Even from afar, you can’t miss Palladio’s 1577 Il Redentore, a triumph of white marble along the Grand Canal celebrating the city’s deliverance from the Black Death. Inside over the portal, Paolo Piazza’s strikingly modern 1619 Gratitude of Venice for Liberation from the Plague shows the city held aloft by angels in sobering shades of grey. Survival is never taken for granted by Venetians, who walk across the Giudecca Canal on a shaky pontoon bridge from the Zattere to give thanks during the Festa del Redentore (Feast of the Redeemer).
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D
Santa Maria Assunta
Santa Maria Assunta was founded in the 7th century and rebuilt in the 11th. The Madonna rises like the sun in an eastern apse shimmering with gold mosaics, while on the western wall, a mosaic Last Judgment shows the Adriatic as a sea nymph ushering souls lost at sea towards St Peter, who’s jangling the keys to Paradise like God’s own bouncer. Climb the bell tower for a long view over the lagoon and animals that no longer have to fear Ernest Hemingway’s hunting parties. Last entry to the church/bell tower is half an hour before closing.
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Museum
The museum has Canova’s 1808 funerary stelae featuring gorgeous women dabbing their eyes with their cloaks, Tullio Lombardo’s wide-eyed 1505 saint whom Titian is said to have referenced for his Madonna at I Frari, and three brooding Tintoretto canvases: Last Supper, with a ghostly dog begging for bread; the gathering gloom of Agony in the Garden; and the abstract, mostly black Washing of the Feet.
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