Venice overview

• Essentials
  • Overview
  • Basics
  • Getting there
  • Getting around
• City sights
  • Top sights
  • Tourist trail
  • Offbeat sights
  • Nearby trips
  • Gondolas
• Things to do
  • Eating out
  • Cafe bars
  • Shopping
  • Nightlife
  • Festivals
• Planning
  • When to go
  • Where to stay
  • Find a hotel

Venice overview

Venice lays claim to be one of the most romantic holiday travel destinations in the world. Set in a beautiful lagoon, with winding waterways for streets, Venice is awash with fabulous treasures - from the magnificent Rialto Venice bridge to the altarpieces of Titian.

Venice history is one of astonishing wealth. This was the centre of Mediterranean maritime power for centuries. The former Venetian powerhouse is now, somewhat sadly, sinking into the mud. It's a tourist theme park kept afloat by an astonishing 20 million visitors every year.

Hotels in Venice Italy take more cash per room than any other city in the world. With just 90,000 hotel beds in the city itself, many Venice holidays will involve day trips by vaporetto from hotels on mainland Mestre.

However they arrive, visitors to Venice are staggered by the city's architectural heritage, charmed by its vivid colours and entranced at its artistic wonders. They may also find themselves outraged at the avaricious rip-off prices in tourist hotspots like St Mark's, stifled by the countless crowds and lost down a maze of claustrophobic side streets. Whatever your thoughts on Venice's unique culture, always check out the best deals on Travel Insurance before setting out on a Venice city break

Snaking through the heart of Venice is the Grand Canal, always busy with vaporetto boats, lined with sumptuous painted palazzo and topped by the photographic wonders of St Mark's Square and the neighbouring Palazzo Ducale.

Canaletto scenes beckon at every turn, bolstered by scores of magnificent churches, many crammed with paintings and sculptures in a roll call of the world's greatest artists, from Carpaccio to Tintoretto. Among the city treasures are museums such as the Accademia whose collections consist of virtually nothing but major masterpieces.

And off the tourist trail, visitors can delight in the backwaters and picturesque byways. Venice's intricate network of around 150 canals and 400 bridges is split into six districts, or sesistre. The city is unique in having no buses, cars, trams or taxis - only footpaths and boats.

Venice may be a glorious, glamorous cliché; its beauty may be faded and crumbling; the avarice of its inhabitants glutted by an endless stream of free-spending tourists but, no matter how many travel books you have read or photographs and films you have seen, a Venice holiday remains an awe inspiring experience. That first Venice vaporetto cruise down the Grand Canal will never be forgotten.

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