12 Top Places to Visit in Venice, Italy

Napoleon famously called Piazza San Marco "the drawing room of Europe" and the description still fits. The 175-metre by 82-metre square is the only piazza in Venice (every other square is a campo) and the geographic and ceremonial centre of the city. It is bordered on three sides by the arcaded Procuratie - 16th-century buildings that once housed the procurators of St Mark - and on the fourth by the Basilica and Doge's Palace.

The square sees everything: pigeons and selfie sticks at midday, classical orchestras duelling between Caffe Florian (open since 1720) and Caffe Quadri at sunset, and full submersion under acqua alta tides several times a winter. A coffee at one of the outdoor tables runs around EUR 12-15, but you are paying for one of the most theatrical settings in Europe. For free, walk the perimeter and look up at the Torre dell'Orologio - the blue-and-gold astronomical clock from 1499 - and the Bocca di Leone postboxes once used for anonymous denunciations during the Republic.

The Doge's Palace (Palazzo Ducale) was the seat of the Venetian government for nearly a thousand years - residence of the elected Doge, meeting hall of the Great Council, and headquarters of the law courts and prison. The current pink-and-white Venetian Gothic building dates from the 14th century, with later wings by Antonio da Ponte after the 1577 fire. Tintoretto's Paradiso, in the Hall of the Great Council, is one of the largest oil paintings in the world at 22 metres wide.

The standard ticket covers the state apartments, the council chambers with their Veronese and Tintoretto ceilings, the armoury, and a walk through the prison via the Bridge of Sighs. The Secret Itineraries tour (book separately, EUR 32 with audioguide) opens the doge's private rooms, the torture chamber, and the lead-roofed cells where Casanova was held in 1755 - small group, two hours, and the only way to see the working spaces of the Republic.

At 98.6 metres, St Mark's Campanile is the tallest structure in Venice and gives the only true bird's-eye view over the city, the lagoon, and on a clear day the Dolomites 100 km to the north. The original 9th-century bell tower stood for over 900 years before collapsing in a heap of rubble on 14 July 1902 - miraculously injuring no one. The current tower is a faithful 1912 reconstruction "dov'era e com'era" (where it was and how it was).

A lift takes you to the belfry in 60 seconds. From the top you see the labyrinth of red roofs, the Grand Canal's reverse S, the colourful houses of Burano on the horizon, and the five bell-loud chambers that still ring on the hour. Galileo Galilei demonstrated his telescope to the doge from this very tower in 1609. Climbing other Venice towers (San Giorgio Maggiore is the locals' alternative) gives you a different angle - but only the Campanile puts Piazza San Marco directly beneath your feet.

The Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri) is a 17th-century enclosed limestone bridge that spans the Rio di Palazzo, connecting the interrogation rooms of the Doge's Palace to the New Prisons. Designed by Antonio Contino around 1600, it earned its romantic name from Lord Byron, who imagined convicts catching their last glimpse of the lagoon through its small windows on the way to the cells. In reality most prisoners by that date were petty offenders - the Republic had largely abandoned hard sentencing.

Two ways to experience it. From the outside, walk to the Ponte della Paglia just behind Piazza San Marco for the classic postcard view of the white facade arcing over the canal between two stone walls. From the inside, the Doge's Palace standard ticket lets you cross it from the magistrates' offices to the prison cells - a 30-second walk in worn limestone with two latticed windows looking out over the same view convicts saw four centuries ago.

The Grand Canal (Canal Grande) is Venice's main artery - a 3.8-km, S-shaped waterway 30-90 metres wide that splits the historic centre between the sestieri. Roughly 170 buildings face it, most dating from the 13th to 18th centuries: the Gothic Ca' d'Oro, the Renaissance Palazzo Grimani, the Baroque Ca' Pesaro, and the Byzantine Fondaco dei Turchi where Turkish merchants traded silk for spice. Just four bridges cross it - the Rialto, Accademia, Scalzi, and the modern 2008 Calatrava bridge at Piazzale Roma.

The single best way to see the canal is also the cheapest. Take Vaporetto Line 1 from Piazzale Roma to San Marco - it stops 14 times along the route in 45 minutes, costs EUR 9.50 with a single ticket, and takes you under every bridge with a palace-by-palace view from water level. Sit at the rear in the open-air seats. The slow night version is better still: lights spill out of the palaces' first-floor halls, where Venetian families still live above the boarded-up water gates.

The Rialto Bridge is the oldest of the four bridges spanning the Grand Canal and was the only crossing for nearly 600 years. The current single-span stone bridge by Antonio da Ponte opened in 1591, replacing four earlier wooden bridges that had repeatedly collapsed or burned. Its 28-metre arch has to support a covered arcade of 24 shops and three pedestrian walkways - a gamble at the time that Michelangelo himself reportedly bid against. The bridge held; today it carries 30,000 people a day.

Crossing the Rialto Bridge is part of any Venice itinerary, but the area around it deserves time too. The Rialto Market on the San Polo side is one of Europe's oldest food markets - the Pescheria fish stalls open 7:30 am-12:30 pm Tuesday to Saturday with red mullet, langoustines, and soft-shell moeche crabs straight from the lagoon. The arcaded fruit and vegetable market opens earlier and runs longer. Bacari (Venetian wine bars) line the streets behind the market, serving cicchetti - small bites with a glass of ombra wine - from EUR 1.50.

The Gallerie dell'Accademia holds the world's finest collection of pre-19th-century Venetian painting - 800 works housed in three former religious buildings on the south bank of the Grand Canal. The collection follows the Venetian school from the 1300s Byzantine icons through Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Tiepolo, and Canaletto. Highlights include Veronese's gigantic Feast in the House of Levi (commissioned as a Last Supper, then renamed after the Inquisition objected), Titian's Pieta (his last work, finished by Palma il Giovane after Titian died of plague in 1576), and Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (only displayed in rotation due to its fragility).

Allow at least 2 hours. The galleries are spread across 24 rooms grouped chronologically and the building itself - a former church, monastery, and Scuola Grande della Carita - is part of the experience. Audioguides cost EUR 6 and are useful given that few labels are translated to English. The Accademia is also one of the few major Venice attractions that is genuinely well lit and air-conditioned in summer.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection occupies the unfinished one-storey Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal - the home Peggy Guggenheim (niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim) bought in 1949 and lived in until her death in 1979. The museum displays her personal collection of 20th-century art: Picasso, Pollock, Magritte, Mondrian, Dali, Ernst, de Chirico, Brancusi, and Calder, plus key Italian Futurists like Boccioni and Severini. The works hang in the rooms where she lived with them, alongside her dressing table and her sunglasses collection.

The sculpture garden facing the canal includes the Marini bronze Angel of the City - the rider whose detachable phallus Peggy used to remove when nuns were due to visit. A glass pavilion on the garden hosts rotating exhibitions of contemporary artists. The whole museum is small enough to do in 90 minutes and offers a striking palate-cleanser after a day of Tintoretto and Titian. Peggy and her 14 dogs are buried in the garden.

Santa Maria della Salute is the great octagonal Baroque church that anchors the south side of the Grand Canal entrance - the white-domed silhouette in every postcard sunset over Venice. The Venetian Senate commissioned it in 1631 as a votive offering for deliverance from the plague that killed roughly a third of the city's population. Architect Baldassare Longhena, just 32 at the time, won the design competition; construction took 56 years and required driving over a million wooden piles into the lagoon mud as foundations. The church was consecrated in 1687.

Entry to the main church is free. The interior is a vast circular space under the great dome with eight chapels around the perimeter - lighter and airier than most Venetian churches because Longhena designed it specifically to be experienced as a single grand circular procession. The sacristy (EUR 6) holds Titian's early works including St Mark Enthroned, and Tintoretto's Wedding at Cana with portraits of his contemporaries as the wedding guests. On 21 November each year - Festa della Salute - a temporary pontoon bridge is built across the Grand Canal so Venetians can walk to the church to give thanks.

Murano is a cluster of seven small islands in the Venetian Lagoon and has been the centre of European glassmaking since 1291, when the Republic relocated all glass furnaces here to prevent fires destroying timber-built Venice. For five centuries Murano glassmakers were forbidden under penalty of death from leaving the island - and equally forbidden from disclosing their techniques. The result is a craft tradition of millefiori beads, fluted goblets, gold-leaf inlay, and chandeliers that still drives the island's economy.

Most visitors come for two reasons. Watch a master glassblower at work in one of the working furnaces along Fondamenta dei Vetrai - free demonstrations run daily, with an obligation-free sales pitch afterwards. Then walk to the Museo del Vetro (Glass Museum, EUR 12) for 700 years of context, including Roman pieces from the 1st century AD and the famous Barovier Wedding Cup from 1470. Buy from shops marked with the Vetro Artistico Murano trademark - a blue-and-yellow seal that guarantees authentic Murano-made glass and not Asian imports.

Burano is a small fishing island 40 minutes by vaporetto past Murano and famously the most photogenic spot in the entire Venetian Lagoon. Its 2,800 residents live in pink, lemon, mint, sky-blue, and crimson houses tightly packed along a network of narrow canals. Local legend says fishermen painted their homes in bright colours so they could spot them through the lagoon fog when returning at night. The colour scheme is now protected by city ordinance: residents must apply to the council for permission and choose from the approved palette for their plot.

Beyond the houses, Burano has a centuries-old lacemaking tradition - the Lace Museum (Museo del Merletto, EUR 5) on Piazza Galuppi traces it from the 16th century through to the few elderly women who still produce handmade pieces. The leaning bell tower of San Martino Vescovo is the tallest structure on the island and tilts visibly at 1.83 metres off vertical due to subsiding foundations. Lunch on Burano is a tradition - try risotto de go (with goby fish from the lagoon) at Trattoria al Gatto Nero, the island's best-known restaurant.