Everyone lands at San Marco. The lagoon is where the day opens up.
Which St Mark’s ticket skips the queue along the façade. What a gondola costs once you are actually sitting in it. Whether Burano earns a whole day. Reviews of every tour you can book in Venice.
What Venice sells, and where each one starts
St Mark’s BasilicaTimed entry, the mosaics, the terrace
from $11
Gondola RidesHalf an hour at the city’s fixed rate
from $10
Murano and BuranoOne boat, three islands, most of a day
from $5
The palace, the basilica, a gondola and the island boat.
Four bookings a first Venice trip is built on. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say afterwards.
01The reserved slotDoge’s Palace Reserved Entry TicketThe palace everyone queues for, with an entry time printed on the ticket. Take the first slot of the morning and walk straight past the line.
02Under the goldSkip-the-line St. Mark’s Basilica Entry & AudioguideSkip the queue along the façade and go in for the mosaics, with an audio guide doing the explaining at your own pace.
03The half hour you came forGrand Canal by Gondola with Live CommentaryThe Grand Canal from water level, with a commentary that tells you whose palace is whose before you drift past it.
04The island dayBoat Trip: Glimpse of Murano, Torcello & Burano IslandsMurano for the furnaces, Burano for the colour, Torcello for the quiet. One boat, most of a day, back before dinner.
Four ways into St Mark’s Square, and what each one actually opens.
Two of the finest buildings in Europe stand on the same square, and almost every Venice itinerary begins by choosing between them. Here is what each ticket covers and what it costs to walk in.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · Doge’s Palace & St. Mark’s Basilica with Terrace Access Tour
Straight inTimed entry to the basilica or the palace, and nothing you will not use.
The basilica, explainedSomeone to tell you what the mosaics are saying, and the Pala d’Oro behind the altar.
The palace and the prisonsCouncil chambers, the Bridge of Sighs, and the cells on the far side of it.
The view from the topThe campanile lift, and the whole square laid out flat underneath you.
All 171 St Mark’s Square tickets and tours →
Six Venices, and the best day out in each of them.
The square and its two great buildings, the water under the Rialto, the coloured islands an hour out in the lagoon, the counter bars where dinner is eaten standing up, and the lanes the guided crowds never turn into.
In Venice the better half of the day happens off the pavement.
A gondola turning under the Rialto, a wooden boat out past the cemetery island to Murano and Burano, a kayak in a back canal at seven in the morning. The city was built to be arrived at by water and it still reads best that way.
The Venice days more travellers book than any other.
Every Venice review →The tours that carry more travellers through the city than anything else, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
La Fenice Opera House Entry Ticket with Audio Guide
Step inside Venice’s La Fenice Opera House without attending a performance. Your ticket includes an audio guide in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish, with access to the theatre’s ornate rooms, royal box, exhibitions, and historic auditorium.
From · $14
Read our review →
2
Doge’s Palace & St. Mark’s Basilica with Terrace Access Tour
from $123
3
Murano and Burano Boat Tour with Glass Factory Visit
from $34
4
Murano, Burano and Torcello Half-Day Sightseeing Tour
from $25
5
Murano & Burano Islands Guided Small-Group Tour by Private Boat
from $36
6
Doge’s Palace, St Mark’s Basilica, and Pala d’Oro
from $100
7
Murano & Burano Panoramic Boat Tour w/ Glassblowing
from $29
8
Legendary Venice: Doge’s Palace, St Mark’s & VIP Terrace Access
from $76
What a day in Venice actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. Venice has a reputation for emptying wallets, and a good third of its best days come in under the price of dinner.
Monument and museum tickets, glass demonstrations on Murano, walking tours of the sestieri and the shared boat out to the islands.
Cicchetti crawls and cooking classes, guided runs through the palace and the basilica, kayaks in the canals, an evening of Vivaldi.
Private guides, the long coach day up into the Dolomites, wine in the Prosecco hills, and the once-a-trip splurges.
Dinner in Venice is eaten standing up, in three different bars.
A bacaro serves small plates straight off the counter and a glass of whatever is open. The Rialto market sets the menu in the morning, the crawl starts around six, and the good tours finish somewhere you would never have found on your own.
Three things that happen in Venice and nowhere else.
Canals and old churches turn up all over Italy. A furnace on a lagoon island, a bench where you paint your own carnival mask, and Vivaldi played in the rooms he wrote for do not.
Glass Off the Furnace
The republic moved its glass furnaces out to Murano in 1291, largely so the city would stop burning down. Seven centuries later the island still works to the same rhythm: a gather of molten glass on the end of a rod, half a minute of shaping while it is soft enough to move, then back into the heat. A demonstration takes about as long as a coffee, and most of them are free to walk into if you arrive by tour boat.
- 1Burano, Torcello & Murano Boat Tour w/Glassblowing★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 10,245 reviews
- 2Murano and Burano Boat Tour with Glass Factory Visit★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 9,527 reviews
- 3Murano & Burano Panoramic Boat Tour w/ Glassblowing★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 6,212 reviews
The Mask You Paint Yourself
Venetian masks were street clothing long before they were souvenirs. A bauta or a moretta let a citizen gamble, court and complain with no name attached, and the republic legislated on who could wear what for four hundred years. The workshops hand you a raw papier-mâché blank, the gesso and the leaf, and you leave carrying the one you made.
- 1Carnival Mask Workshop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,925 reviews
- 2Venetian Carnival Mask Making Class in Venice, Italy★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 525 reviews
- 3Venetian Masks Workshop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 411 reviews
Vivaldi Where He Worked
Vivaldi spent most of his working life teaching the orphan girls of the Pietà, a few hundred metres along the waterfront from St Mark’s. The Four Seasons is still played most nights of the week in the churches and scuole of the city, in rooms built for exactly that sound and holding a couple of hundred people at most.
- 1La Fenice Opera House Entry Ticket with Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 11,742 reviews
- 2Interpreti Veneziani Concert at Church of San Vidal★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 3,256 reviews
- 3Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Live Classical Music Concert★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,524 reviews
Four Venice bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this city can be decided over breakfast. These four run on entry slots, concert evenings and boat timetables that take no interest in when your train gets in.
- 01Doge’s Palace Reserved Entry TicketEntry is sold by time slot and every slot has a cap. The early ones, before the square fills up, go first.
- 02Doge’s Palace & St. Mark’s Basilica with Terrace Access TourPaid entry to the basilica is timed as well, and the hours before the tour groups reach the door are the ones that clear out first.
- 03Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Live Classical Music ConcertA concert is one evening in one church, with only the seats the room happens to hold.
- 04Boat Trip: Glimpse of Murano, Torcello & Burano IslandsThe island boats run to a timetable, and the return leg is fixed before you step on board.
When the tide comes up over the paving in Piazza San Marco.
Venice floods on the tide, most often between October and January, and the lowest ground in the whole city is the square itself. Duckboards go out, the water drops again within a few hours, and the day still needs a plan. That plan and the July crush are the same one: something with a roof and a start time.
By monument, and by water
By kind of day: gold, water, glass or table
Six day trips that leave Venice before the square fills up.
Verona
Padua
The Dolomites
Prosecco Hills
Lake Garda
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