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Families & small groups
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ART & HISTORY
- Classic Venice
- Hidden Venice
- Casanova's Life Tour
- Ghosts in Venice Tour
CLASSIC TOURS
- Doge's Palace and The Prisons
- Basilica of St. Mark
- Accademia Tour
- Rialto Market
EXCLUSIVE TOURS
- Private Islands Excursion
- Venetian Cooking Class
- Gondola Ride
- Gondola Ride with Music and Champagne
- Grand Canal Tour

Our fully authorized guides will show you the secrets of this city with special knowledgeble care.

2010 SPECIAL TOUR OFFERS

January | February | March
Save your money booking in advance!

MAIN MUSEUMS
- Doge's Palace
- Basilica of Saint Mark
- Accademia
- Ca' D'Oro
- Arsenale
IMPORTANT CHURCHES
- Frari Church
- Basilica of St. Mark
- Accademia Tour
- Rialto Market
INTERESTING PALACES
- Doge's Palace
- Prisons of Venice
IMPORTANT MONUMENTS
- Marco Polo's House
- Casanova's House
- Saint Mark's Bell Tower
- Saint Giorgio's Bell Tower

Our fully authorized guides will show you the secrets of this city with special knowledgeble care.

LOCAL TRADITIONS
- "Cicchetti & Ombre"
RESTAURANTS
- Most popular restaurants
- Central local Restaurants
- Hidden local Restaurants
OSTERIE
- "...Osteria...": a way to eat & drink as Venetians do.

LOCAL FOOD TO ORDER

Appetizers | First Course | Main Course | Wines
Taste the culture, follow our suggestions!


Venice, Veneto, Italy

Introduction
Venice (Venezia) is composed of 118 small islands and connected to the mainland city of Mestre by a thin causeway. The city is divided into seven ancient administrative districts or “sestieri”: Cannaregio, Castello, San Marco, Dorsoduro, San Polo, Giudecca Island and Santa Croce, with the Canal Grande snaking throughout.
You can walk to most places in Venice itself, and take a ride on a vaporetto (waterbus) to any of the islands.
Venice is one of Italy's top travel cities and a beautiful, romantic destination with many attractions.
Its small, traffic-free streets along the winding canals make for great walking. You'll find many magnificent churches and palaces, lively squares, and interesting shops.
A museum City
Venice is undoubtedly a museum city, a city whose center, sharply defined by canals, islands and the melancholy lagoon in which it sits, stopped expanding and changing centuries ago.
Not only is the physical infrastructure of Venice literally sinking into the sea, but climate change is likely to bring water levels up in the near future, threatening the city's very existence.
Meanwhile, industry is declining, andmanufacturing jobs are being outsourced to China. These threats add to the peculiarly sinister literary and cinematic ghosts that haunt the city: the killer dwarf of Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now, the decadent pedophile in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice who succumbs to lust and cholera as (in Visconti's film version of the story) heavy Mahler music plays.
A city between past and future
On the other hand, Venice is very much a city of the present and the future. The absence of cars could, in itself, be seen as somewhat futuristic; I'm sure many cities will ban cars from their central areas within the next hundred years, and, like Venice, become places where the loudest sound you hear is the sound of happy human voices.
Venice lives by charisma, communication and creativity. Tourists from all over the world arrive at Marco Polo airport, making Venice's economy a global one. Its industries have transitioned successfully to services and spectacle; even the glass blowers on the island of Murano are now performer-artisans who call their wares art a part from still few factories still exporting all over the word.
Art has also become an economic motor in the form of the Biennale, an impressive array of cutting-edge curation held in the former weapons magazine, the Arsenale. If an almost total lack of Wi-Fi signal in Venice indicates that the city isn't quite as futuristic or as communication-oriented as it might be, the seemingly endless succession of conferences dedicated to creativity suggest that it's a city that's thinking faster than it's sinking, a city rich in what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls "cultural capital" and which welcomes what Richard Florida calls "the creative class".
Venice Location and Weather
Venice is in on northeast coast of Italy. It is protected from the Adriatic Sea by a strip of land called the Lido. The region around Venice is called the Veneto.
Tourism in Venice
Tourism has been part of the life of Venice for centuries. However, in the last thirty years, Venice has faced grave problems due to the tremendous volume of tourists each year.
Transportation in Venice
The main public transport in Venice is the vaporetto, boats that ply the principal waterways.
The #1 goes along the Grand Canal and makes many stops, so its a good way to cruise the main canal and get a good overview of the city. There are also other ways to enjoy this city under a boat point of view: water taxis and gondolas. See vaporetto information and fares for more about Venice's public transportation on the water: ACTV.
Tourist Information Offices in Venice
The train station and St. Mark's tourist office are almost always very crowded but has lots of information and can help with hotel reservations. Most staff speak at least some English.
Venice Attractions
One of the best things to do in Venice is to take some time wandering along the canals off the main tourist track. Venice has many fine attractions and museums. Here are some of the top things to see in Venice:
Saint Mark's Square, Piazza San Marco is the main square of Venice surrounded by chic sidewalk cafes and fancy shops. While it's a great place to enjoy the scenery and people, you will definitely pay top price to sit at an outdoor table. In the evening, you can listen to live music, too. Walking in the piazza and taking photos is, of course, free.
Saint Mark's Basilica, Basilica di San Marco is a beautiful church blending the architecture of East and West. It was consecrated in 832 AD.
Doge's Palace, Palazzo Ducale, also on St. Mark's Square, is the most impressive building in Venice and well worth a tour. It was the political and judicial hub of Venetian government until the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797. The palace was connected to its prisons by the famous "Bridge of Sighs."
Grand Canal, Canal Grande is the main thoroughfare of Venice. It's full of all kinds of boats and liined with beautiful buildings.
Rialto Bridge (Ponte di Rialto), the main bridge crossing the Grand Canal in the heart of Venice, is over 400 years old. Nearby is the Rialto Market, an interesting and lively food market with lots of little shops.
Galleria del'Accademia, is one of Italy's best art museums with 24 rooms in 3 historic buildings. Get there early to avoid the crowds.
What to buy in Venice
Venetian glass, especially from the island of Murano, is a specialty. Carnevale/Carnival masks make great gifts or souvenirs.
Venice is also known for its marbled paper and you might find some good lace here, too. You will also see many nice watercolors of Venetian scenes.