5 Best Things to Do in Venice During the Venice Carnival

The Mocenigo family held this palace into the twentieth century. It opened to the public in 1985 after restoration, and a 2013 reworking put twenty rooms of the first noble floor on show, under ceilings frescoed in 1787 by Jacopo Guarana and Giambattista Canal. The study centre attached to it holds more than 13,000 costume figurines from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, drawn from the Correr, Guggenheim, Cini and Grassi collections.

For anyone planning a costume this is the reference material. Mannequins wear real seventeenth and eighteenth century Venetian garments in the rooms those garments were made for, and a further sequence covers Venice's trade in perfume, down to the raw ingredients and the glass the scent was sold in. Going here before you hire anything tends to save money, because half an hour with the originals makes plain how far a rented polyester tricorn sits from the thing it copies. Full period costume hire from a Venetian atelier runs to several hundred euros a day and the serious workshops take bookings months ahead of Martedì Grasso.

Venezia Unica, the city's official ticketing portal, lists admission at 15 euros full and 7.50 euros reduced. Published timetables disagree: some give 10:00 to 17:00 daily, others 10:00 to 18:00 with Monday closed, so confirm the day before rather than crossing the city on faith. Last admission is an hour before closing. Carnival makes almost no difference to the numbers inside. San Stae is one stop up the Grand Canal from Rialto and most of the costumed traffic never gets off the boat.

Pro Tip: Take the line 1 vaporetto north to San Stae before 11:00 and do this first. Southbound line 1 boats towards Rialto after midday during Carnival regularly fill up and leave people standing on the pontoon for two or three sailings.

Ca' Macana has been making masks in Dorsoduro since 1984, in papier-mâché pressed over clay moulds and painted by hand on the premises. The shapes are the historic ones. The bauta covers the face with a jutting chin that lets the wearer eat and drink without lifting it. The moretta is the small black velvet oval that women held on by biting an internal button, which meant they could not talk while masked. The medico della peste with its long beak descends from the seventeenth-century physician Charles de Lorme.

The Carnival argument for a working atelier over a bridge stall is practical rather than romantic. From late January the bridges around Rialto and the length of the Strada Nova fill with racks of injection-moulded masks that warp within a day and cut into the bridge of the nose after two hours. A hand-finished papier-mâché mask holds its shape, sits on the face properly and can be worn across three days. Browsing costs nothing, and the shop keeps its winter hours of 10:00 to 18:30 daily, holidays included.

Two honest caveats. Ca' Macana also runs mask-painting sessions in its studio but does not publish a rate online, so you have to email or telephone for the price, and during Carnival week those sessions fill early. And if you want something made to your own face rather than picked off the wall, that is a matter of weeks, not an afternoon. Turning up on 8 February wanting a bespoke mask for the next morning will get you a polite no.

Pro Tip: Arrive before 11:00 on a weekday; from about 15:00 the Dorsoduro mask shops fill with people who need something for that evening. If you want a mask fitted or made to order, email the workshop at least three weeks before Martedì Grasso on 9 February 2027 and ask for the price in writing.

Baldassare Longhena began this palace in 1649 and had it up to the first floor by 1661, then work stopped for decades. The Rezzonico family bought the unfinished shell in 1750 and put Giorgio Massari on it; the Grand Canal facade was completed between 1750 and 1752 and the interiors were close to done by 1756. The city of Venice bought the building in June 1935 and turned it into the Museum of Eighteenth-Century Venice.

That is the exact century every Carnival costume on the street outside is imitating. Pietro Longhi's small canvases upstairs show Venetians in bauta and tricorn doing thoroughly unglamorous things, including the crowd that queued to see Clara the rhinoceros when she was exhibited in Venice in 1751. Giambattista Tiepolo ceilings sit above them, and the reconstructed pharmacy and the covered gondola fill out the picture of how the clothes were actually lived in. Seeing the garments in their own rooms rather than on a hire-shop rail changes what you notice back outside.

Winter hours run 10:00 to 17:00 from November to March with Tuesday as the closing day, and the last published admission was 10 euros full, 7.50 euros reduced for under-25s, over-65s and Rolling Venice holders. Queues stay short through Carnival, partly because line 1 is the slowest boat on the Grand Canal and partly because the costumed crowd concentrates east of the Accademia bridge. Costumed visitors do come in to be photographed in the ballroom, so expect a short wait there rather than at the door.

Pro Tip: Be at the door for the 10:00 opening, go straight up for the Longhi rooms and come down to the ballroom afterwards. Note the closing day: Martedì Grasso 2027 falls on Tuesday 9 February, so if Carnival's final day is your only free one, Ca' Rezzonico is shut and Palazzo Mocenigo is the substitute.

Andrea Palladio laid the first stone of this church in 1566 and the main structure was standing by 1576, with the facade finished between 1597 and 1610. The bell tower is not the original: the 1467 campanile collapsed in 1774 and Benedetto Buratti's replacement, 75 metres tall, went up in 1791. It has a lift, which is the whole point during Carnival: height without the stair climb, and without the queue across the water in Piazza San Marco.

What you see from the top is the Carnival as a shape rather than a crush: Piazza San Marco, the Riva degli Schiavoni, the traffic on the Bacino di San Marco and the costumed crowd reduced to specks of colour moving along the waterfront. The basilica below is free to enter and holds Tintoretto's Last Supper and his Entombment. The campanile costs 8 euros for adults and 6 euros reduced, and opening runs 9:30 to 18:30 Monday to Saturday, with Sunday access cut around services.

The downside is the crossing. San Giorgio Maggiore is 500 metres from Piazza San Marco but the only public way over is the line 2 vaporetto from San Zaccaria, and on Carnival's peak weekends that pontoon is one of the worst pinch points in the city. Boats leave full, and losing 30 minutes in a queue for a 3-minute crossing is normal on the middle Sunday. The lift also takes only a handful of people at a time and the viewing chamber at the top is small, so there is a second queue up there.

Pro Tip: Cross on the first line 2 departure after 09:00 from San Zaccaria, before the day's costumed crowd gathers on the Riva degli Schiavoni. Buy the 8 euro campanile ticket at the desk inside the basilica and go up before you look round the church, not after.