Venezia, has always been a cosmopolitan city, a meeting point between the east and the west, a crossroads of culture and goods, city of opposites and difficult equilibriums, but also an enchantress and fascinating, a place suspended between land and sea, between present and past. Venice is a unique city in the world for its history, and also for its urban development, determined by particular historical and environmental conditions, which has given life to a true and proper maze of facades, bridges and canals, in which water and light are essential components. We propose only one of the many possible itineraries to discover the most famous places of Venice, but at the same time invite you to follow our intuition and tastes in this journey. Because Venice is made so, to go around the narrow streets and canals is to set off for new discoveries and enchantments.

The Grand Canal and Ca' d'Oro. The Grand Canal has always been the main artery for city traffic. Nowadays, vaporetti, boats with goods, and gondolas have taken the place of the great transport ships and gondolas of yesterday. During the great traditional festivals, like the famous Historical Regatta at the beginning of September, the Canal Grande returns to its past with the sumptuous parades of decorated boats. If in the beginning the richest Venetian merchants built their houses on the Grand Canal for practical necessity, it soon became the principal space for display and to own a house along the waterway became a symbol of wealth and prestige. Noble families and the richest merchants competed in the building of palaces and the decoration of their facades: the result is a great richness and variety of styles and typologies of buildings. Almost a thousand years of architecture is represented along its banks, from the Veneto-Byzantine style of the XIIth century, until the recent constructions of the 1950s, with the particular presence of late gothic palaces of the fifteenth century. Among these the Ca' d'Oro, one of the most beautiful Venetian gothic buildings, assumes a particular importance. The palace stands majestically on the Grand Canal a short distance from the Rialto Bridge. Commissioned by the rich patrician Mario Contarini, who personally oversaw the building, the palace was built in the first decades of the fifteenth century. The name Ca' d'Oro (the golden house) was used immediately to designate the elaborate palace whose facade was decorated with gold plating, polychrome marble, crenellation and meticulously carved stone. The interiors and above all the courtyard are of great architectural interest. The courtyard opens with a gothic gate where a covered stairway leads to the first floor. The palace houses the Galleria Franchetti, one of the most important art collections of the city.

Piazza S. Marco, the living room of the world as the Venetians like to define it, has always been the vital centre of the city. The cultural, political and civil centre in the past, today it is becoming even more a center of monuments, except for the Basilica of S. Marco which continues to be the religious reference point of the city. But what links the past with the present in the area Marciana is the uniqueness and the surrounding monuments. Few places in the world can boast such quantity and variety of architectural and artistic masterpieces in such a small area. The area appears as a unified complex, although its present form is the result of eight centuries of building, thanks to the unifying element represented by the ground floor portico, which runs practically uninterrupted and, in effect, occupies three sides of the piazza, echoing the arches of the basilica's façade. In the Palazzo Ducale today one can still visit the Doge's rooms or the great hall of the Venetian judiciary and government that led the most glorious of Italian republics until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Across the famous Bridge of Sighs one can visit the State Prisons, the so-called Piombi, and see the cells of the condemned. La Basilica of San Marco, built following the model of the great Byzantine churches of Constantinopole, appears with vaults and cupolas decorated with a golden mosaic and admirably worked precious thirteenth century pavements. In the Sansoviniana Library one can visit the magnificent rooms of the old library decorated by the most important artists of the sixteenth century Veneto school. Finally, on the Piazza there is the Correr Museum, with interesting temporary exhibitions and a very important collection of art works, and the Archeological Museum, where important finds from the oldest ancient sites are conserved. From the imposing bell tower of San Marco, which can be visited all throughout the year, one can enjoy the most beautiful panorama of Venice.

L'isola di Burano is famous all over the world for the working of lace and for its surprising many coloured houses. Its urban environment has developed around the internal canals, where the main activities of the island are carried out. These are essentially connected to fishing and the working of lace, which is an activity that has been handed down since the sixteenth century and reached its highest splendor in the XVI and the XVIIth centuries. The Lace School and Lace Museum, established by Paulo Fambri and Countess Adriana Marcello in 1872, contributed to the revival of this art and its fame in the world. Near the characteristic fish market (la Pescheria) stands one of the island's buildings of artistic worth: the seventeenth century former church of S. Maria della Grazie, called le Cappuccine, while in the sixteenth century Church of San Martino we can admire an early work of Giambattista Tiepolo (1725), and a painting by Antonio Zanchi, the Miracle of Sant'Albano, in which one can see the piazza of the island as it was at the end of the seventeenth century. Burano can be a departure point for an excursion to Torcello, the oldest of the Venetian islands, and of San Francesco of the Desert, the island monastery of the Franciscan fathers.

L'isola di Murano owes its fame to its glass blowing. Formed by five small islands and crossed by its own Grand Canal, it was founded in the Middle Ages. In 1291 Venice was a city that was for the most part made up of wooden buildings and therefore at risk of fire. Therefore the Great Council of the city decreed the transfer of the glassworks to the island from Venice. In the sixteenth century the island was chosen by the Venitian aristocracy as a holiday spot. The building of sumptuous palaces gave Murano its great splendor. But the alternating fortunes of glass production and the fall of the Venetian Republic signaled the beginning of a period of decline for the island. Many of its historical buildings were demolished to obtain building materials. Today few examples remain of its past grandeur such as the Basilica of Santa Maria and Donato and the Church of S. Pietro Martire, inside which you will find works by Jacopo Tintoretto, Giovanni Bellini, and Pietro Veronese. Today Murano is one of the most active historical centres of the lagoon. Its economy is still mostly based on the production of glass, and employs approximately 3000 workers and continues to be admired throughout the world and by the tourists who go there to admire the fragile, imaginative and strange glass masterpieces.