Piazza San Marco and other Venice, Italy Things to Do Tips

This is the center piece of Venice. It is stunning, iconic and stacked high with history, art and architecture. It's delicately tiled surface is filled with as many pidgeons as tourists, and they dive bomb you from the buildings that surround the square, encouraged by the idiots that feed them. I hope at the very least that feed they sell is dosed with a sterilizer to get those rats with wings under control.

The square contains some of the world's most famous and recognisable buildings, including the Clock Tower which soars up over the square and offers outstanding views, if you are prepared to queue for hours to take a trip up in its curiously named SCAM lifts. The Basilica San Marco is even more impressive inside than it is outside, feeling like you've walked into a treasure trove rather than a church.

The other great building is the Doge's Palace, home to the government of the republic and the duke himself. The tours of this extensive building are an absolute must for lovers of history, architecture or art. My personal favourite of the whole palace was the original maps painted in the time of Venice's great merchant past, showing a strange view of the world as it was seen back then.

Attached to the palace are the tedious dungeons. These are worth a visit just so you can cross over the Bridge of Sighs, so named because the prisoners were said to sigh as they walked across it and viewed freedom for the last time. The bridge is a must see, but the dungeons are filled with artefacts like cat bones and tooth picks, and isn't really all that interesting.

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The first thing you should do on any visit to Venice is take a trip up the Grand Canal on any of the local water taxis that ply it's snaking inverted s-shaped length. Take a trip when you arrive, and then take several more trips, in both directions, at night, at sunset, and first thing in the morning. You'll see something different each time, and the water taxis give relatively cheap entertainment in an expensive city. You can ride out on a gondola too, if you feel like splashing out.

There are beautiful buildings stretching out all along the Grand Canal, but the key sight on the journey from the Stazione to the Plaza San Marco is the Rialto bridge, striding the Canal Grande about half way up its length. This magnificent and famous bridge was originally nothing more than a floating pontoon, set down in the 12th century to serve the market on the east bank. The current stone bridge dates from 1591, and was considered such an outrageous design at the time, that it was thought it could never last very long. And yet here it still is.

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I've never encountered anything quite like the streets of Venice. I've never got lost so many times, nor failed to navigate such short and deceptively simple routes on a map. The number of dead ends, streets and squares too tiny for any map, and the tall narrow streets with little in the way of observable landmarks make for a literal maze. If you have any sense you'll let the initial frustration ebb away, and just let yourself wander.

You'll take longer to find the specific sights this way, but you are gauranteed to find much that you never planned on. You'll also never be that lost, nor that far away from home, because the old streets of Venice don't cover a very wide area. If all else fails make your way back to the Grand Canal, and take a taxi from there to somewhere else that you want to be.

The worst thing is when you are trying to find a restaurant. The first three days in the city resulted in total failures at locating a number of restaurants I'd got on my recommended list. Now with Venetian restaurants there is a problem if you don't find one you are looking for: there seems to be more bad or average restaurants here than good ones. But when you do find the one you are looking for, the sense of success is palpable and makes the food taste all the nicer.

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The Jewish Ghetto of Venice is home to one of Europe's oldest Jewish populations, and the original ghetto. It is believed that the name ghetto even gets its name from the place the Jewish people were forced to live, the foundries or "getti", close to the modern train station on the north side of the old city.

In this tiny area the entire population was locked in at night, and only allowed out during the day when marked by a yellow circle stitched to their left shoulder. The people were also only allowed a limited number of occupation, including money lending which the Gentiles of Venice were forbidden from practicing by the Catholic Church.

The stigma of being Jews, outsiders and money lenders (a sin for the Christians of the time) meant that the Jewish people were mistreated even though Venice was a relatively liberal European city at this time, during the 16th century. The forced enclosures and cramped living conditions mean that the Jewish ghetto has the tallest buildings in all of old Venice, as people made the most of the limited space available.

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Venice is practically a patchwork of tiny islands isolated in a sea of canals, but it also has a number of actual islands dotted around outside the main city. I visited three: San Giorgio Maggiore, Lido and Murano.

The Isola San Giorgio Maggiore is a tiny island that sits opposite the Piazza San Marco and offers great views of the Clock Tower and Doge's Palace. If you want to get a good night shot on solid ground, then take the short taxi trip across the water to the SGM. The island boasts its own special history, and its own grand architecture, in the form of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. This church with its spire so similar to the clock tower in the Piazza has existed on the island since the 9th century.

Lido is the biggest of the islands, and is located a good 30 minutes or so away from the Piazza San Marco. It is a long strip of land that acts as a break against the Adriactic, and has some of the best beaches in the area. It's so big it even has roads, cars and buses, that do little more than circle its 11 km length. Apart from the beaches the island also offers grand views of all of Venice, with the Alps visible behind on clear days, across the Laguna Veneta.

Murano is an island on the north side Venice, that can be accessed by a water taxi that sails via the cemetary island, so be careful not to get off too early. Murano is famous for its glass, and has a museum dedicated to its history. I personally found the museum to be a little small and uninteresting, and wouldn't recommend it unless you have very little to do, or have a great interest in glass blowing techniques.

The island is pleasant enough to wander around, and the lack of crowds makes for a pleasant change from the main canals of Venice.

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There are plenty of art museums in Venice, and I visited a few, but the one that really stood out was the only one not intwined with the ancient history of the museum, but rather than modern. Tucked away near the Church of Zitelle in Giudecca, the Peggy Guggenheim museum is a small but excellent collection of works from the early half of the 20th century, and is considered to be Italy's premier collection of this kind.

The works were collected by Peggy Guggenheim, once wife of Max Ernst and neice of the mining magnate, Solomon R. Guggenheim. They works span Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, and includes works from Picasso, Dali and Pollock. It also has some excellent work from less well known Italian futurists.

The collection is small, but fantastic, and there are a number of well informed English speaking guides who give regular art history lectures on specific works. It is definitely worth your time popping across the Grand Canal from the Piazza San Marco to take a look.

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