Venice Travel Guide

Venice should not exist, and that is exactly the wonder of it: a city built on wooden piles across a hundred-odd islands in a lagoon, with canals for streets and not a single car. The set pieces live up to themselves — St Mark's Square ringed by its golden basilica and the Doge's Palace, the Rialto Bridge arching over the Grand Canal, the gondolas sliding through green water — but the real Venice is found by getting deliberately lost in the quiet back lanes where the day-trippers never reach.

Go early or stay the night, when the crowds thin and the city turns intimate and strange. Ride the vaporetto down the Grand Canal at golden hour, eat cicchetti standing in a bàcaro, and take the boat out to glass-blowing Murano and rainbow-housed Burano. Fragile, crowded, and utterly singular, Venice is a place to feel before you photograph.