Venice, Italy

Venice, Italy. The city was formed by connecting more than a hundred of small islands in northern Italy. The city is well known among tourists thanks to its beauty and because it has been arranged with small canals, including the Grand Canal, instead of roads. In summer, this city turns into a popular tourist destination.

The central square, which is the Piazza San Marco, is adorned by the Campanile bell tower, which offers superb views of the city from its top, and the St. Mark Basilica’s ornamented tiles and Byzantine mosaics.

This city is well famous for its Carnival, its Architecture, its Face mask festivals, the glasses, the Gondola rides and the beaches. Old beliefs say that if lovers kiss under the bridge of the Grand Canal while riding a Gondola then they will have an inner and pure love.

During the Carnival season hordes of youth and tourists are attracted to the city. If you are planning to celebrate Carnival in Venice, you should book accommodation or train tickets in advance not to miss the opportunity to enjoy such an outstanding event.

You can reach the city by train or by bus, but in my opinion, reaching by train is more convenient and you can also enjoy the views of the lagoon and the sea while you travel. To move inside the city, you should use boat services, which by the way get crowded during the peak seasons, and buy tickets for each trip at around 7 euro. The best option is to buy a one day travelling pass for €20 which offers unlimited rides during the day.

You can find many accommodations as B&B and hostels for reasonable price outside the city centre. If you plan to spend few days in the city, I advise you to book in advance so as to not to have any problem. Without a doubt, the most popular tourist destination is Piazza San Marco.

Piazza San Marco

It is known as St. Mark’s Square in English and it is the main public square in the city. Before the Napoleonic era, four horses presided over the Piazza symbolizing the power and the pride of Venice. During the conquering period of Napoleon, the four horses were taken down and shipped to Paris. The following places, which are located in Piazza San Marco, are highly popular among tourists:

St. Mark’s Basilica

This church is decorated with great arches, which have been decorated with marble, and with a central doorway decorated with Romanesque carvings. It uses rare marbles, porphyry, alabaster, and jasper brought back from the East for decorating more than 500 columns. According to the law passed in 1075 by Doge, all returning ships were required to bring back something precious to decorate the Basilica. Thanks to this, 4240 square meters of space have been decorated with gold mosaics during the 12 and 13 centuries.

These reasons make this place simply incredible, not only in religious terms but also in architectural and historical terms. The basilica was constructed in the likes of Byzantine architecture. The beauty, which does not fade with the time, is impossible to turn into words. So, I recommend you visiting this place, but my free advice is to go early in the morning not to waste your very much precious time in waiting in line. Opening hours are Mon-Sat 9. 45am-5pm, Sun 2pm-5pm.

Doge’s Palace

This is one of the famous landmarks of Venetian Gothic style. The place turned into a museum in 1923. Initially this place was a palace and in the 10th century a fire destroyed most of its original structure. Therefore, during the reconstruction, the whole layout of the building was changed. Still some of the Byzantine Venetian architecture characteristics can be seen in the ground floor of this building. This place is located side by side to St Mark’s Basilica, which enhances the beauty of both artistic features.

Correr Museum

Along the west end of the Piazza, the entrance of the “Correr Museum” can be found. It was built by Napoleon in 1810 and known as “Ala Napoleonica”. The museum offers tickets at different prices. Anyhow, you can buy a full day ticket for €20.

This museum was brought to life and tempered by the passion and the enthusiasm of Teodoro Correr who collected the art, documents and objects meaningful to the ancient history of Venice. The place was turned into a museum in 1836 by adding the rare collection of Teodoro Correr. During the later periods, the collection of the museum was enlarged by the other noble families in Venice.

I recommend you visiting this place since it’s a great example of the golden ages of Venice.

Piazzetta

This is part of the larger Piazza located between Grand Canal and Piazza San Marco and it was conceived as a wide promenade. It lies between the Doge's Palace, which is located on the east and Jacopo Sansovino's Biblioteca (Library), which located on the west side.

Two large columns that represent the two patron saints of Venice are placed at the end of the Piazzetta. On the top of the first column, the statue of Teodoro holds a spear with a crocodile to symbolize the dragon which Teodoro was said to have slain. On the top of the second column, a winged lion symbolizes St. Mark.

Apart from these ancient stories, this place makes a magnificent view. For me this place was very beautiful at night. Tough, during the summer season, it gets crowded at night. But I loved to have night walks with my friend in this place.

Campanile

The campanile was erected in the broader area of the Piazza San Marco. It is a tall building which had been used by approaching ships as a beacon to guide them home (Light house). During the war season, it was used as watch tower. The construction began in the 10th century only to be completed in the 12th century. During the later period of the 15 century, its pointed roof and gilded pinnacle were added to the building. From time to time this building has been damaged due to different conflicts, but it was rebuilt into its original state by using original stones and sculptures, including Sansovino's four bronze masterpieces which have been placed between the twin columns.

Today you can climb up this building and enjoy the city views and lagoon from the top. There is the facility of elevator to go up conveniently. You should buy a ticket to go up which cost around 15 euro. Most of the time you will wait around 30 min in the queue before you your turn. But it is worth the wait.

(Some of the historical details were extracted from tour guide books)

I have been only on short - one day trip in Venezia with my Erasmus friends but I think  one day or a weekend is enough to see everything worth visiting there. First impression is like from the movies - city on water, small canals with gondolas passing by everywhere. The whole city is a labirynth of small streets but it is quite easy to find main touristic spots. It's definitely more difficult to find your travel companions in the crowd.

Although Venice is well-connected to other cities and you can get there by train from main Italian cities, because of being surrounded by water it is a bit cut off from the rest of the world. This basically means that prices are twice as expensive there, as in the other, bigger cities in Northern Italy. Even when you walk through many restaurants to compare prices, it is still more pricy than in other places.

The other disadvantage is that Venezia isn't too big, so it is overcrowded with tourists most of the time, especially during summertime. I have been there at the end of September and streets were still full of foreigners. Also, as a touristic place, there are a lot of small stalls with carnival masks (some of them are really impressive) and souvenirs. This also means that it's not always very clean, as people tend to leave bottles, cans or papers by the sidewalks. If you imagine romantic trip on the gondola, here's another thing that can ruin it: the water doesn't smell very good, I wouldn't recommend swimming in there. Students budget didn't allow us to try it, as it is very expensive and not very long trip, better for couples planning romantic getaway.

But it is definitely worth visiting Venice - it's beautiful, has nice architecture and the small streets are charming. You can just sit by the water and observe small ships and gondolas passing by. If you have more time, you can take short boat trip to other places close to Venice. It is nice to see the city but this is rather an expensive experience, so one day spent in there is enough to experience the atmosphere.

A typical "activity" that comes to mind when you think about Venice is going on a gondola ride along the city's canals. There are stops at many points around the city, especially along the Grand Canal.

When I arrived in Venice and I saw the gondolas for the first time, I was left feeling amazed because they are much bigger and more elegant than I expected. In fact, I thought that they were some first class gondolas for higher-paying customers and then there would be others for tourists, hahaha. They are long and black with several seats; the front two seats are definitely the nicest and most comfortable, as they have velvety upholstery. The gondoliers usually wear striped jumpers (the stripes are either red, black or blue), and the typical gondolier hat. However, I was disappointed that not all of them wore it, as I think it really does form part of the overall experience, and some of them were also spending all of their time on their phones whilst rowing...

The first shock came when I saw the price of a gondola ride... 80€ during the day and 100€ at night! And that's just for 30 minutes! I don't know, in my eyes, that seems extremely expensive. But yet, there were still gondolas full of tourists everywhere that you looked! We then saw in a tourism office close to Piazzale Roma that, if you bought a ticket to share a gondola with others, it would cost 27€, which still seemed expensive to me. However, I think that I resigned to thinking that it was either this or nothing. But, in the end, we shared a gondola with other people that we came across at one of the stops and it cost us just 16€ per person, so my advice would be to negotiate on price if your budget doesn't stretch too far.

At least it was worth it in the end. The gondolier, Roberto, was very friendly and he knew how to speak Spanish, so he told us several little curios about Venice and answered all of my questions.

I asked him if the water in Venice's canals are part of the sea or a river, and Roberto put an end to my uncertainty, telling me that it is actually a very big lake. He also told us that the majority of the city's residents have their own boat that they use to get around Venice, and that the houses usually have two doors: one that leads out to the canal, and another that opens onto the street. The city has flooded on many an occasion and they have put down some low wooden tables that create a walkway that people can travel across, and he showed us the different water levels in the canal.

The ride started along one of the canals that lies close to the Scuola San Rocco, but it then moved onto the Grand Canal, where we were lucky enough to see the sun set for the evening, which is something that I will never forget - it was beautiful.

We also saw the famous hotel that appears in all of the films set in Venice, as well as the palace where George Clooney got married back in 2014.

At the end of our trip along the canals, we were able to take some photos with the gondolier before paying. One little anecdote that I will never forget is losing my phone in the gondola, before later stumbling across our gondolier by chance and asking him if he knew where it was, and he reunited me with it! I was very lucky, to say the least.