Things to do in Venice: the 20 sights that are worth the trip

What to see in Venice depends on how much time you have, but the order of priorities hardly changes: San Marco first, then the Grand Canal, then the art of Dorsoduro and the lagoon. Below are the twenty things to do in Venice that really matter, each with its official price and a link to the in-depth page. Two warnings before you start: St Mark’s Basilica can only be visited with a booking, and on peak spring and summer days, day visitors pay the access fee.

The 20 best things to do in Venice

1. St Mark’s Square, free. Go early in the morning or after sunset, when you can hear the historic cafés’ orchestras and the square empties out.
2. St Mark’s Basilica, €10. Golden mosaics spanning more than a thousand years; the visit lasts no more than 20 minutes along a fixed route, plus €10 for the Pala d’Oro or for the Museum with the original horses and the terrace over the square.
3. Doge’s Palace, €35. The Great Council and Senate chambers, the Armoury, the New Prisons and the passage inside the Bridge of Sighs, all on the same ticket.
4. St Mark’s Campanile, €15. It is 98.6 metres tall and a lift takes you up in about 30 seconds; in summer it stays open into the evening.
5. The Grand Canal by vaporetto, €9.50. Line 1 stops at every landing stage from Piazzale Roma to San Marco: it’s the cheapest cruise in town.
6. Rialto Bridge and market, free. The late-16th-century stone bridge and, just behind it, the Pescheria fish market (Tuesday to Saturday) and the Erbaria produce market, both in the morning.
7. A gondola ride, €90 per boat. The municipal tariff for 30 minutes by day, up to 5 people; to cross the Grand Canal standing up, the €2 traghetto is enough.
8. Gallerie dell’Accademia, €20. Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian, Veronese and Giorgione’s The Tempest in Room VIII; under-18s get in free.
9. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, €17. The 20th century in an unfinished palazzo on the Grand Canal, with a sculpture garden; closed on Tuesdays.
10. Frari Basilica, €8. Titian’s Assunta on the high altar and Donatello’s wooden St John the Baptist.
11. Santa Maria della Salute, free. The great votive church on the tip of Dorsoduro; the sacristy with Tintoretto costs €6.
12. San Giorgio Maggiore, basilica free. Palladio three minutes by vaporetto from San Zaccaria, plus the Fondazione Cini’s Borges Labyrinth (€15). The bell tower is currently closed for works.
13. Murano, Glass Museum €15. Furnaces, glass-blowing demonstrations and the church of Santi Maria e Donato with its 12th-century mosaic floor.
14. Burano, Lace Museum €7. Coloured houses, a leaning bell tower and fish trattorias; reached on line 12 from Fondamente Nove.
15. Torcello, basilica €5. Founded in 639, with a mosaic Last Judgement; it is the quietest island in the lagoon.
16. The Ghetto, free to walk around. The world’s first “ghetto”, from 1516; the Jewish Museum is closed for renovation, but the synagogues can be visited on a guided tour.
17. Teatro La Fenice, from €14. By day the audio-guided visit, by night the opera: no shorts or sleeveless tops, or you’re turned away without a refund.
18. Scala Contarini del Bovolo, €9. A spiral staircase from 1499, 26 metres tall, with a belvedere over the rooftops.
19. Ca’ Rezzonico, €15. 18th-century Venice in a palazzo on the Grand Canal: two Canalettos, the Pietro Longhi rooms and Giandomenico Tiepolo’s frescoes.
20. Giudecca and the Zattere, free. Palladio’s Redentore and the best view of Venice, from one side or the other of the Giudecca Canal; the vaporetto costs €9.50.

If you have time to spare, add the Museo Correr and the Clock Tower (guided visit, €15), the Lido in summer and a Vivaldi concert.

What to book before you travel

You can still improvise almost everything in Venice, but not San Marco. This is the list of what’s worth fixing in advance, with the official rules that matter.

Everything else, from the islands to the churches, from the Guggenheim to the concerts, can usually be found on the day, except on bank-holiday weekends and during Carnival.

One, two or three days

With one day you do San Marco in the morning and Rialto and the Grand Canal in the afternoon: the timed itinerary is in Venice in one day. With two days the second goes to Dorsoduro (Accademia or Guggenheim, the Salute, the Zattere) or to the islands of Murano and Burano; the 48-hour vaporetto pass costs €35. With three days you add Torcello, San Giorgio and Giudecca, an evening of music and a wander through the quieter districts such as Castello and Cannaregio, where Venice becomes a lived-in city again. The 72-hour pass costs €45, or €27 with a Rolling Venice card if you’re aged 6 to 29.

Free things to do in Venice

Much of what makes Venice unique costs nothing. St Mark’s Square, Rialto and its market, the Zattere and the Riva degli Schiavoni belong to everyone. The churches of the Chorus circuit are currently free to enter Monday to Saturday, 10:30 to 17:00: among them the Madonna dell’Orto, where Tintoretto is buried, Santa Maria dei Miracoli and San Sebastiano, decorated by Veronese. Only a few spaces inside, such as the San Zaccaria museum and crypt or the Redentore sacristy, cost €3.50.

The Salute and San Giorgio Maggiore basilicas are also free. The Gallerie dell’Accademia open free to everyone on the first Sunday of the month and on some national holidays, and are always free for under-18s. According to several sources, entry to the Museo della Musica in the church of San Maurizio is also free, and you only pay for the audio guide (€5). And the traghetto, the two-oared gondola that crosses the Grand Canal, costs €2: the cheapest way to get into a gondola.

Ideas by interest

Art

The classic route has three stops: the Accademia for Venetian painting from the 14th to the 18th century, the Frari for Titian’s Assunta, the Peggy Guggenheim for the 20th century. With the Dorsoduro Museum Mile, according to the Gallerie dell’Accademia, a ticket paid at one member museum gets you the reduced price at the others within seven days (Accademia €17, Guggenheim €14). Modern-art lovers add Ca’ Pesaro, with Rodin’s The Thinker; before you go, check that Klimt’s Judith II isn’t out on loan. In even years from May to November there’s the Biennale Arte, in odd years the Architecture Biennale, at the Giardini and the Arsenale (€30, two entries, even on different days).

Views

The highest you can reach is the St Mark’s Campanile, with its lift. More intimate is the Scala del Bovolo, near Campo Manin. The terrace of Palazzo Pisani, home of the Conservatory, at 31 metres, can only be visited with a guide and is booked on Tiqets (€20). For free there’s the Accademia Bridge, with the Salute at the end of the Grand Canal, and the Giudecca waterfront at sunset. The San Giorgio bell tower, usually the best view over St Mark’s Basin, is currently closed.

Islands

Half a day is enough for Murano and Burano; with Torcello you need a full day. Doing it yourself costs less than a tour: a 24-hour vaporetto pass (€25), line 12 from Fondamente Nove and the line 9 shuttle from Burano to Torcello every 15 minutes. Organised tours on Tiqets start at €20 with a glass demonstration, but they often leave you little more than half an hour on Torcello. Everything is on our lagoon islands page.

Cicchetti and food

The Venetian ritual is the bàcaro crawl: an ombra (small glass) of wine and a few cicchetti at the counter, standing, before dinner. The liveliest areas are the Fondamenta della Misericordia and degli Ormesini in Cannaregio, the Rialto market and Campo Santa Margherita in Dorsoduro. At lunchtime, a tramezzino at a bar counter is the quick, cheap alternative to the restaurants around San Marco.

Music

Vivaldi is at home here: I Musici Veneziani play in period costume at the Scuola Grande di San Teodoro (usually from 20:30, €30 to €60 depending on the section), the Interpreti Veneziani in the church of San Vidal, other ensembles at the Pietà. La Fenice has its opera and symphony season, and Musica a Palazzo stages La Traviata room by room in a palazzo on the Grand Canal (€95 on Tiqets). All the options are in theatres and shows.

Venice in the rain

The San Marco museums fill a whole day on a single ticket: the Doge’s Palace, the Correr, the Archaeological Museum and the Marciana rooms. The Natural History Museum, in the Fontego dei Turchi, has a cetacean gallery with whale skeletons and an aquarium of the Upper Adriatic seabed. La Fenice can be visited with an audio guide (from €14), Palazzo Mocenigo tells the story of textiles, fashion and perfume, and the Da Vinci Interactive Museum at San Rocco has around fifty machines you can touch.

Between October and January, rain can bring acqua alta. Sirens announce the forecast level (one long tone for 110 cm, two for 120), raised walkways keep the main routes passable up to about 120 cm, and shops sell plastic boots to pull on over your shoes. St Mark’s Square is one of the first places to flood.

Venice with kids

The Natural History Museum is the best fit for little ones, with the whale and the aquarium, and costs €7.50 for ages 6 to 14. On Murano, a furnace demonstration lasts 10 to 20 minutes and enchants every age. The Borges Labyrinth on San Giorgio is a one-kilometre path between 3,200 box plants (children aged 6–14 €5). In summer the Lido has free beaches such as Blue Moon, and a mask-making workshop on Tiqets (€77) runs all year round.

A few useful rules: at the Civic Museums, two adults with at least one young person up to 16 all pay the reduced price; at the Gallerie dell’Accademia under-18s go free, at the Guggenheim under-10s. On the vaporetto, children under 6 don’t pay, and under-14s are exempt from the access fee. The Doge’s Palace Secret Itineraries and the Clock Tower don’t admit children under 6.

Venice in the evening

In summer, on Fridays and Saturdays, the Doge’s Palace stays open until 23:00 (last entry 22:00), on dates that change each year. The Campanile closes at 21:15 in the warm season. The gondola from 19:00 costs €110 for 35 minutes. Concerts usually start between 20:30 and 21:00; opera at La Fenice follows its season’s timetable, and an hour before a performance unsold seats may go on sale at a reduced price.

For an aperitivo, head to the Misericordia in Cannaregio or Campo Santa Margherita. At the historic cafés on St Mark’s Square, sitting at a table while the orchestra plays carries a per-person music supplement (at Florian, €7 was recently reported): standing at the counter usually costs far less.

What to skip, honestly

• Paying double for the Basilica if you can book ahead. The official ticket costs €10, hosted entry on Tiqets €19, and the platform’s Basilica products have low ratings. It only makes sense when the official slots are gone or you’ve already used your account’s 5 tickets for the year.
• A “Bridge of Sighs ticket”. It doesn’t exist: the bridge is included in the Doge’s Palace. The paid visit to the Palazzo delle Prigioni on Tiqets (€9.90) is a separate tour, not the only way to see the cells.
• €20 “three islands” tours if Torcello matters to you. With half an hour on the island you won’t see the basilica and the bell tower; the Murano stop often doubles as a furnace’s sales room.
• Expecting the Vitruvian Man at the Accademia. Leonardo’s drawing is kept in the dark and is not on display, except in rare exhibitions.
• Counting on the Ca’ d’Oro or the San Giorgio bell tower. Both are closed for works, with no reopening date.
• Sitting on steps or feeding the pigeons. It is banned throughout the historic centre and the fine ranges from €25 to €500.
• Rialto at midday. At that hour the bridge is a funnel of people: go early in the morning, together with the market.

To plan a real day, with times and transport, read Venice in one day. If you’re planning several civic museums, the €50 Museum Pass already pays for itself with the Doge’s Palace plus one more museum.