Venice
Occupying a large palazzo with views over the Giudecca Canal, this beautiful new space for contemporary art was lovingly restored by the Russian V-A-C…
Venice
Occupying a large palazzo with views over the Giudecca Canal, this beautiful new space for contemporary art was lovingly restored by the Russian V-A-C…
Venice
This wooden cabin on the Rio di San Trovaso looks like a stray ski chalet, but it’s one of Venice's few working squeri (shipyards), with refinished…
Venice
Grand Canal palaces rank among the world’s most desirable real estate, and multi-coloured marble marvel Ca’ Dario casts a mesmerising reflection, which…
Venice
This 16th-century church with its facade stacked with muscular caryatids – which the celebrated art critic Ruskin thought ‘the most monstrous example of…
Venice
Seventeenth-century backpackers must have thought they’d died and gone to heaven at this magnificent confraternity clubhouse, dedicated to Our Lady of Mt…
Murano, Burano & the Northern Islands
Burano's Lace Museum tells the story of a craft that cut across social boundaries, endured for centuries and evoked the epitome of sophistication reached…
Venice
A dream made real, San Salvador was conceived in the 7th century when Jesus appeared to a sleeping Bishop Magnus and pointed out on a lagoon map the exact…
Murano, Burano & the Northern Islands
From 1468 until the 18th century, this tiny island served as a quarantine station. Merchants waited out their 40-day exile in one of the 100 cells that…
Venice
A retrofit designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Piano transformed Venice’s historic salt warehouses into art galleries. Although the facade…
Venice
Flourishes of carved stone like icing across the 1660s facade of this church, dedicated to Moses, make it appear positively lickable, although 19th…
San Polo & Santa Croce
Travellers pass modest St Paul's Church (founded in the 9th century) without guessing that major dramas unfold inside. Under the carena di nave (ship's…
Murano, Burano & the Northern Islands
Sixteenth-century St Martin's Church, with its worryingly wonky 53m-high campanile (bell tower), is worth a peek for Giambattista Tiepolo’s 1725 La…
Chiesa di San Giovanni in Bragora
Venice
This serene 15th-century brick church harmonises Gothic and Renaissance styles with remarkable ease, setting the tone for a young Antonio Vivaldi, who was…
San Polo & Santa Croce
Slinging fresh fish daily for 700 years and still going strong, Venetian fishmongers are more vital to local cuisine than any single chef. Glistening fish…
Belluno
Belluno’s majestic cathedral with its elegant, onion-domed campanile (bell tower) designed by Filippo Juvarra was originally raised in 850 on top of an…
Venice
This plain almshouse is often overlooked in favour of the extravagant Jesuit church opposite. But the 12th-century Order of the Cross that founded it to…
Venice
This perfectly preserved 17th-century spezieria (pharmacy) illustrates how Venetian medical advice was dispensed three centuries ago, with curatives in…
Padua
Flanking the western side of elegant Piazza dei Signori, the Palazzo del Capitaniato became the seat of Venetian authority when Padua came under the…
Venice
One of Venice's most photographed sights, the Bridge of Sighs connects Palazzo Ducale to the 16th-century Priggione Nove (New Prisons). Its improbable…
Venice
Built by Doge Vitale Falier in the 11th century, Chiesa di San Vidal got a 1706–14 Palladian facelift to commemorate Doge Francesco Morosoni's victory…
Vicenza
Built by the Dominicans in 1261 to house a relic from Christ’s crown of thorns donated to the bishop of Vicenza by Louis IX of France, this Romanesque…
Venice
At the eastern limit of the Giardini Pubblici, on the island of Sant'Elena, this memorial park is planted with umbrella pines, each originally…
San Polo & Santa Croce
The influence of Palladio swirls around neoclassical St Eustace's Church (completed in 1709), from the dazzling white, statue-heavy facade facing the…
Venice
Sior Rioba, a gent in an outsized turban, has been hanging out at the corner of Campo dei Mori since the Middle Ages. The square's name is a misnomer, as…
Venice
Positioned at the top of the public gardens, this statue of Italian Unification hero Giuseppe Garibaldi has him commanding a mountain with a tame-looking…
Padua
When a 1944 bombing raid demolished the extraordinary 1448–57 frescoes by Andrea Mantegna in the Capella Overtari in the Chiesa degli Eremitani, the loss…
The Veneto
Italy’s great poet Petrarch (Petrarca) spent the last five years of his life in the medieval village of Arquà Petrarca, where you can visit his stone…
Murano, Burano & the Northern Islands
Take a pause from glass shopping to check out The Baptism of Christ, attributed to Tintoretto, in 16th-century St Peter the Martyr's Church. The parish…
Venice
Avant-garde Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s 2008 bridge over the Grand Canal has been called many things: a fish tail, a glass tongue, pleasingly…
Venice
This elegant 16th-century Gothic palazzo was the former home of industrialist and philanthropist Vittorio Cini, who filled it with first-class paintings,…
Vicenza
Designed by Lorenzo di Bologna, construction of Vicenza's cathedral began in the late 15th century. In the mid-16th century, Andrea Palladio added his own…
Venice
Founded in 829, San Zulian got a Sansovino makeover funded by physician Tomasso Rangone, who made his fortune by selling syphilis cures and secrets to…
San Polo & Santa Croce
Designed by Giovanni Antonio Scalfarotto and completed in 1738, this domed neoclassical building was one of the last churches to be built in Venice. It's…
Venice
The right hand of John the Baptist was once housed in this church founded in the 9th century; however, the church burned in the 14th century, and what you…
The Veneto
At the southern reaches of the Colli Euganei (Euganean Hills), in the pocket-sized town of Monselice, lies this remarkable medieval castle. Its oldest…
Venice
Housed in the restored neoclassical Chiesa di San Maurizio, this collection of rare 17th- to 20th-century instruments is accompanied by informative panels…
Venice
The wooden Ponte dell’Accademia was built in 1933 as a temporary replacement for an 1854 iron bridge, but this span, arched like a cat’s back, remains a…
The Veneto
The eye-catching Scuola dei Battuti is covered inside and out with 16th-century frescoes by Ludovico Pozzoserrato. The building was once home to a…
Treviso
This unusual, soaring Gothic structure dates to the 13th and 14th centuries, although much of what you see today was rebuilt after devastating air strikes…
Venice
Designed by Sansovino, the neighbourhood church of St Martin has a Greek-cross-shaped interior lined with eight chapels and topped by a trompe l'œil…