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Venice apartments - Venice guide

» Italian-Tourism.com » Venice guide

Venice is known everywhere as the most extraordinary city in the world, and one of the world’s most thoroughly unique destinations. A city that inspires even the most jaded of travellers. Quite simply, La Serenissima is unlike anywhere else on the planet, with a collage of 116 islands connected by 409 bridges, where cars are banned and everyone, including postmen and the police, go by boat. History is writ large in this northeastern Italian city and when visitors ease through the morning mists, on an empty canal with grandiose buildings rising up on all sides, it is easy to slip back through the centuries, to the time of the Doges – the omnipotent rulers, whose influence spread well beyond the Venetian Lagoon. Venice then was an exotic melting pot of East and West, where traders and travellers, including Marco Polo, breezed in and out, peddling their silk and spices. Venice under the Doges was a land of unimaginable wealth – riches that were spent wisely in crafting some of Europe’s most memorable buildings, from the imposing Doges’ Palace itself through to the grand architecture of St Mark’s Square, famously described by Napoleon as the ‘drawing room of Europe’.

Away from the main tourist throng, another Venice appears, with narrow canals, women hanging out their washing and small osterias (bars) where locals, for once, outnumber tourists. It is in the intense heat of a Mediterranean summer that the city can just get too much and the tourist congregations too large. Many savvy visitors are now choosing to turn up out of season, in the colder months, when swirls of mist and frosty winds descend on the canals. At this time, the beauty of this unique city emerges through quintessential Venetian experiences, such as getting off a vaporetto at a random stop and ambling down a deserted canal, sniffing out an unheralded trattoria or bouncing across the Venetian Lagoon after a Bellini at Harry’s Bar, en route to dinner at the Hotel Cipriani.

PLACES OF NOTE

St Mark's Square, often known in English by its Italian name Piazza San Marco, is the town square of Venice. The buildings around the Square, anti-clockwise from the Grand Canal, are the Doge's Palace, St Mark's Basilica, the Procuratie Vecchie, the Napoleonic Wing of the Procuraties, the Procuratie Nuove, St Mark's Campanile and Logetta and the Biblioteca Marciana. Most of the ground floor of the Procuraties is occupied by cafes, including the Caffè Florian and Gran Caffè Quadri. The Correr Museum and the Museum of Archaeology are located in some of the buildings of the Square.

Doge's Palace (Palazzo Ducale) is a gothic palace in Venice. It was the residence of the Doge: for some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Republic of Venice, elected by the city-state's aristocracy (the last doge was Lodovico Manin, who abdicated in May 1797, when Venice passed under the power of Napoleon). It contained the offices of a number of political institutions. Perhaps the most spectacular room is the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, originally the meeting place for the legislature. This huge space is lined, walls and ceiling, with paintings, one of which, Tintoretto's vast Paradise, is the largest painting on canvas in the world.

Grand Canal is Venice's largest waterway. Its banks are lined with some of the most beautiful buildings of the city, amongst the many palazzos and churches are the Ca' Rezzonico, Ca d'Oro, Ca' Foscari, Palazzo Barbarigo and the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, housing the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. It forms one of the major water-traffic corridors in the city. Running through most of the city, it "starts" from the lagoon at the train station, makes a large S-shape through the central parts of Venice, and ends by the Canal of San Marco at Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark's Square). Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute stands at the junction between the two canals.

Rialto Bridge (Ponte di Rialto) spans the Grand Canal in Venice. It is the oldest bridge across the canal and probably the most famous in the city. The present stone bridge, a single span designed by Antonio da Ponte, was finally completed in 1591. It is remarkably similar to the wooden bridge it succeeded. The bridge became one of the architectural icons of Venice.

Teatro La Fenice ("the phoenix") is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theaters in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes".

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