Venice: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Venice stands on millions of alder and larch trunks driven point-down into the mud of the lagoon, cut from the forests of Slovenia and Croatia and floated here. Under water and out of the air the wood does not rot; it mineralises. The Salute church alone stands on a hundred thousand of them. Everything on this walk — stone, marble, mosaic — rests on a drowned forest a thousand years old. Two hours, flat, and expect to get lost; everybody does.
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A short history of Venice
Venice was built on wooden piles in the lagoon by refugees from the mainland fleeing the invaders after the fall of Rome. For more than a thousand years it was an independent republic that dominated Mediterranean trade, and in the Fourth Crusade in 1204 it took part in the sack of Constantinople. In 1516 the city's Jews were forced to live in a closed quarter next to a foundry, the "ghetto", and the word spread from here to the whole world. In 1797 Napoleon put an end to the republic, and in 1866 Venice joined Italy. In 1966 a tide of almost two metres flooded it, and since 2020 the MOSE flood barriers have been operating at the lagoon inlets.
The ten best sights in Venice
1Basilica di San MarcoFree to enter, €7 for the gallery, and the queue is worst at eleven
2Palazzo Ducale€30, and the ticket also covers the Correr on the square
3Campanile€10, a lift to the top, and it fell down completely in 1902
4Santa Maria della SaluteFree, built as a thank-you for the end of a plague
5Frari€3, and Titian is buried under his own altarpiece
6Scuola di San Rocco€10, and Tintoretto spent 23 years on the ceilings
7Gallerie dell’Accademia€15, and it is where Venetian painting actually lives
8Peggy Guggenheim€18, in her own unfinished palazzo, and she is buried in the garden
9Punta della Dogana€18, the old customs house, and Tadao Ando rebuilt the inside
10San Giorgio Maggiore€8 for the tower, and it is the view San Marco cannot give you
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Venice →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Venice:
Free walking tours in Venice
Built on a forest upside down
Venice stands on millions of alder and larch trunks driven point-down into the mud of the lagoon, cut from the forests of Slovenia and Croatia and floated here. Under water and out of the air the wood does not rot; it mineralises. The Salute church alone stands on a hundred thousand of them. Everything on this walk — stone, marble, mosaic — rests on a drowned forest a thousand years old. Two hours, flat, and expect to get lost; everybody does.
- Piazza San Marco · The only square in Venice called a piazza; the other five hundred are campi, which means field, because that is what they were. It floods about a hundred times a year and is the lowest point in the city — the stone is laid in a slight dish so the water finds it first.
- Basilica di San Marco · Two merchants stole the body of Saint Mark from Alexandria in 828 and hid it under pork in the barrel so the Muslim customs officers would not search it. The basilica was built to house it, and the four bronze horses on the front were looted from Constantinople in 1204.
- Palazzo Ducale · The Republic elected its doge by a process of ten alternating lotteries and votes, deliberately too complicated to rig, and it lasted eleven hundred years — the longest-running republic in history. The doge could not leave the city, open his own mail, or meet a foreign envoy alone.
- Ponte di Rialto · Four wooden bridges stood here and all four fell or burned. The stone one was finished in 1591 on twelve thousand piles, and engineers of the day predicted it would collapse within a year; it is still carrying the whole city across.
- Mercato di Rialto · Fish has been sold on this spot since 1097. The stone columns of the fish hall carry a carved plaque listing the minimum legal size of each species — a consumer law from the fifteenth century, still legible, and still roughly the rule.
- Santa Maria della Salute · The plague of 1630 killed a third of the city in sixteen months, and the Senate promised a church if it stopped. It stopped, and the church went up on a hundred thousand piles. Venice still walks there over a pontoon bridge every November, and it is a city holiday.
The city behind the city
Thirty million people a year visit Venice and fewer than fifty thousand live on the island — the resident population has fallen by two thirds since 1950 and the city publishes a running counter of it in a pharmacy window. This walk goes where the residents are: the quarter where the Jewish ghetto gave the world the word, the student squares, the boatyard that still makes gondolas by hand. Two hours, and almost no queues anywhere on it.
- Ghetto · In 1516 the Republic confined its Jews to an island that held a copper foundry — geto in Venetian, from the word for casting — and locked the gates at night. The word travelled to every language from this one square. Because they could not build outwards they built upwards, and the houses here are the tallest in Venice.
- Cannaregio · The long straight canals here were dug, not found, to drain the marsh — which is why this quarter has the only grid in Venice. It is where a third of the remaining residents live, and the Misericordia canal is where they drink.
- Frari · A plain brick Franciscan church with Titian’s Assumption over the altar — he painted it at twenty-eight and it made his name. He died of plague in 1576 and was buried here in defiance of the law that plague dead go to the islands, because the city would not put him there.
- Scuola di San Rocco · Tintoretto won the commission by a trick: asked to submit a sketch, he painted the finished ceiling panel instead, installed it overnight, and offered it as a gift the confraternity could not legally refuse. He then spent twenty-three years filling the building, and mirrors are provided for your neck.
- Campo Santa Margherita · The university is around the corner, so this square is the one place in Venice where a glass of wine costs two euros and the people drinking it live here. An ombra — a shadow — is the local name for that glass, from the wine sellers who moved their stalls round San Marco to stay in the campanile’s shade.
- Squero di San Trovaso · One of the last working gondola yards, and the wooden alpine-style sheds are a clue: the boatbuilders came from the Dolomites. A gondola is eleven metres long, built of eight woods, and deliberately asymmetrical — the left side is twenty-four centimetres wider so one oar can drive it straight.
The water is rising
Venice has sunk about twenty-five centimetres in a century — partly the mud compacting, partly the industry on the mainland that pumped out the groundwater until 1970 — and the sea has risen to meet it. The flood of 1966 put the whole city under nearly two metres and emptied it of a generation. The barriers that now close the lagoon cost six billion euros and took seventeen years. This walk is the edge of the city where all of that is visible. Two hours along the water.
- Zattere · A kilometre of south-facing quay, named for the rafts of timber that were floated down from the Alps and unloaded here. It faces Giudecca across the deepest channel in the lagoon, which is why cruise ships used to come through it until the city banned them in 2021.
- Peggy Guggenheim · She bought a palazzo whose owner had run out of money after one storey, lived in it for thirty years with her dogs, and left the city the best collection of twentieth-century art in Italy. She and fourteen dogs are buried in the garden under the same plaque.
- Punta della Dogana · The customs house at the point where the two canals meet, where every ship entering Venice was taxed. On its roof a gilded figure of Fortune turns on a golden ball with the wind — a weathervane that doubles as a statement about where the Republic’s money came from.
- San Giorgio Maggiore · Palladio’s church on its own island, and the campanile is the one view that shows you Venice itself — from San Marco you cannot see San Marco. The lift costs eight euros and there is never a queue, which is the whole secret.
- Arsenale · At its height sixteen thousand people worked here and the yard could assemble a complete warship in a single day by moving the hull past stations of fitters — a production line three centuries before Ford. Dante put it in the Inferno for the smell of the boiling pitch.
- Giardini della Biennale · Napoleon drained a marsh and demolished four churches to make this park in 1807, because he thought Venice needed air. Since 1895 it has held the Biennale, where about thirty countries keep permanent pavilions — a world fair that never ended.
Getting to Venice and getting around
- Marco Polo Airport · The Alilaguna boat is €15 and 70 minutes; the bus is €10 and 25
- Santa Lucia · The only station on the island. Step out and the canal is there
- Piazzale Roma · Where every car and bus stops for good. No vehicles past this point
- Venezia Mestre · On the mainland, where the €80 rooms are. Tram 2 to Piazzale Roma, 10 minutes
Cheap eats in Venice
Eight counters where Venice eats standing. The local habit is the bàcaro: a bar where you stand, order cicchetti — small things on bread, two euros each — and an ombra, a glass of wine. Three or four of those is lunch for twelve euros in a city where a sit-down meal near San Marco is sixty.
- Cantina Do Mori · Cicchetti €2, a glass €3, and it closes at half past seven
- All’Arco · Open 9 to 3, closed Sundays, and gone by two
- Cantine già Schiavi · €1.50 a glass standing, and closed Sunday afternoon
- Osteria al Squero · Opposite the gondola yard, and everyone stands outside
- Dal Moro · Fresh pasta in a box, €8, and it is made in front of you
- Pescaria · Fish since 1097. Closed Sunday and Monday, and done by one
- Rosa Salva · A pastry counter since 1879, and the coffee is €1.40 standing
- Caffè Florian · Open since 1720 and knowingly expensive. €12 a coffee seated
Museums in Venice
- Gallerie dell’Accademia · €15, closed Monday afternoon, and book to skip the queue
- Peggy Guggenheim · €18, Pollock and Ernst, and the garden is part of it
- Palazzo Ducale · €30 with the Correr, and the secret itineraries tour is separate
- Punta della Dogana · €18, the customs house, and Tadao Ando left the brick bare
- Ca’ Rezzonico · €12, and Robert Browning died in a room upstairs
- Museo Correr · Included in the Ducale ticket, and the ballroom is free to see
- Museo del Vetro · €10, on Murano, and the furnaces nearby are free to watch
- Teatro La Fenice · €12 with an audio guide, and it burned down in 1774, 1836 and 1996
Nature and day trips near Venice
The lagoon is five hundred square kilometres of shallow water and the city is one small part of it. The boats that go out to the islands are public transport on a city ticket, not an excursion, and the far islands are nearly empty.
- Torcello · 40 minutes by boat, and the cathedral is €6
- Burano · 40 minutes on boat 12, and a city ticket covers it
- Murano · 10 minutes out, and the furnaces work in the morning
- San Michele · Free, 5 minutes by boat, and closed after four
- Lido · Twelve kilometres of sand, and the only island with cars
- Sant’Erasmo · The lagoon’s vegetable garden, and almost no visitors
- Giardini della Biennale · Free, the only real park on the island, and shaded
- Chioggia · A working fishing town, and the fish market is the reason
Things to do in Venice with kids
- Campanile · €10, a lift all the way, and the queue is shortest at eight
- Murano · Glass blowing demonstrations, and children watch for free
- Libreria Acqua Alta · Books in a gondola and a staircase made of books. Free
- Lido · A real beach, 15 minutes by boat, and free stretches on it
- Burano · The coloured houses, and a leaning bell tower on it
- Fondaco dei Tedeschi · A free rooftop over the Grand Canal. Book a 15-minute slot
Live music in Venice
- Teatro La Fenice · From €25 in the gods, and the season runs all year
- Teatro Malibran · The second opera house, cheaper, and built on Marco Polo’s house
- Venice Jazz Club · €25 with a drink, two sets a night, and booking needed
- Il Paradiso Perduto · Live music in Cannaregio, loud, and locals fill it
- Scuola Grande di San Marco · Now a hospital, and concerts in the old hall
- Arsenale · Open for the Biennale, and concerts in the rope works
Nightlife in Venice
- Campo Santa Margherita · The student square, and wine is €2 a glass standing
- Fondamenta Misericordia · Open late, and nothing starts before nine
- Cantina Do Mori · 1462, standing only, and it shuts at half past seven
- Osteria al Squero · Everyone sits on the canal wall with their glass
- Zattere · Where the sun actually sets, and it is free to sit on
- Giudecca · Two minutes across, quiet, and the view back at night
Frequently asked questions about Venice
What is there to see in Venice?
The top sights in Venice are Basilica di San Marco, Palazzo Ducale and Campanile. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Venice?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Venice without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Venice?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Venice, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Built on a forest upside down.
How do you get to Venice and get around?
The main ways are Marco Polo Airport, Santa Lucia and Piazzale Roma. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Venice, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Venice that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Venice for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.