La Serenissima

A travel guide to help you plan the perfect trip to Venice, Italy

Top Sights
Favorite Hotels
Reid's List
Free Sights
Planning FAQ Venice is a city of stone built on the water—or at least on the marshy mudflats of a lagoon—a feat of engineering and determination if ever there was one. There simply is no place on Earth like La Serenissima, "The Most Serene."

As barbarians feeding off the fall of Rome overran the Italian peninsula in the 5th century, some locals in the Veneto region found it safest to settle where no barbarian in his right mind would come looking for them (or their potential plunder)—in the middle of the water.

Other islands in the Venetian lagoon already supported fishing communities, but young Venice quickly established itself as a shipping center. It built trade ties with Byzantium to the east and began its inexorable rise as a commercial seafaring power. By the 13th century, Venice had conquered many of its neighbors, including Byzantium, and by the 16th century this trading republic had become the Queen of the Adriatic, a mercantile powerhouse that exercised its control over the entire Mediterranean.

Venice's tremendous wealth and centuries of stable republican rule allowed it to enrich its urban and cultural landscape with hundreds of churches and lay fraternities and to support the careers of some of the great late-Renaissance artists like Titian and Tintoretto, masters of color and mood.

Each year the 70,000 residents of Venice are outnumbered by the hordes of visitors to their small lagoon—up to 1.5 million people visit Venice annually, at times making La Serenissima anything but serene. At peak season in June, July, and September, the crowds can be staggering and the hotels booked solid. In fact, Venice gets more attention than it really wants, and is debating passing quota laws or a steep bed tax to stem the tide of tourists. It may soon become the first European city that you'll need a ticket to enter.

Many people leave Venice enchanted, but just as many hurry away feeling like they've spent two days in tour-bus hell and been taken for a ride in some kind of canalside Disneyland. But Venice can be wonderful. You just have to learn how to avoid the crowds and know when to cut loose from your sightseeing agenda and instead get to know the real Venice—if you can find it amidst the souvenir stands and behind long museum lines.

Top Sights 1) St. Mark's Cathedral 2) Accademia Gallery 3) Doge's Palace 4) A gondola ride 5) The Grand Canal 6) Shopping for Venetian glass » more	Free Sights 1) Basilica di San Marco 2) Browsing glass workshops 3) Piazza San Marco 4) San Giorgio 5) The San Trovaso gondola workshop » more	Reid's List 1) The outlying islands 2) Mass at St. Mark's 3) Scuola Grande di S. Rocco 4) Getting lost 5) The "Secret Itineraries" tour 6) Taking a cichetti crawl » more
Fave Hotels • Hotel Caneva [cheap] • Bernardi-Semenzato [moderate] • Hotel Danieli [splurge] » more	Best Eats • Chicchetti [snack] » more	Planning FAQ • Getting to Venice • Venice itineraries • Getting around Venice » more