Unique Things To See In Venice

An Overview of Venice

Undoubtedly one of Italy’s more famous and picturesque cities, the “City of Canals” is home to a winding network of canals, dozens of beautifully designed bridges, striking Italian architecture and beautiful nearby islands. The city is actually a small archipelago of 118 tiny islands, split by channels and connected through a bridge network. Much of the city was made by punching long, pointed poles of wood, oak, larch or pine into the seafloor with horizontal planking and layers of stone placed atop. With legendary views, iconic gondola rides, impressive carnival celebrations and endlessly beautiful streets, there are many unique things to see in Venice.

Unique Things To See In Venice

Libreria Acqua Alta

Located below water level, Liberia Acqua Alta is an offbeat bookstore which offers many vintage titles and a community of cats. However, the small bookshop is famous for it’s decorations, using bathtubs and boats to hold many books. The below-water-level venue floods frequently, so the strange choice of book-carrying-furniture is practical as well as stylistic.

The Mad Colored Houses of Burano

Located on a separate island chain, the houses of Burano are vividly bright colors, lining narrow canals and parks. The four-island archipelago connected by bridges is about 45 minutes away from Venice by boat, making it a popular day trip. According to legend, the houses were painted their flamboyant hues so fishermen could return home in mists and fogs without crashing.

Ponte Dei Pugni Bridge

This marble bridge in Venice is one of the most famous structures arcing over a canal. Identifiable by it’s humble marble steps and low railing, the bridge has a history as a “Fighting Bridge.” Since the 17th century the bridge was the site of rival clan fistfights, with the goal being to punch an opponent into the canal below.

Piazza San Marco

Known in English as “St Mark’s Square” this is the central public square of Venice, offering access to some of the city’s most iconic buildings, including St Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace. From this central location in the city, it’s also easy to view the Grand Canal, the small Giardini Reali community green space, St Mark’s Campanile Cathedral Tower, Torre dell’Orologio Renaissance Clock Tower.

Saint Mark’s Basilica

This famous church is located on the eastern edge of St Mark’s Square. The church once served as the political and religious headquarters for the Republic of Venice. The structure is famous for sheltering invaluable relics which were stolen from Alexandria in Egypt. Inside, visitors can view golden mosaics, Eastern-styled domes, numerous artworks, a golden altarpiece and 4th-century bronze horses.

Doge’s Palace

Built in the unique Venetian Gothic Style, this is one of the most notable landmarks in Venice. The architectural masterpiece used layers of ornamentation from the 14th and 15th century following it’s original construction, gradually embellishing the structure with Renaissance and Mannerist adjunctions. The interior is home to magnificent statues, expansive chambers, unique artifacts and some of the world’s most famous artworks, including masterpieces by Titian, Veronese and A. Vittoria.

The Grand Canal

While canals rise throughout Venice, the Grand Canal is a major water-traffic corridor curving through the core of the amazing city. The Grand Canal offers some of the most popular walking paths, boat rides, gondola routes and access to city landmarks. The numerous bridges that stretch over the canal’s waters are some of the finest in the city.

St Mark’s Campanile Bell Tower

Likely home to some of the most impressive and commanding views over Venice, the bell tower is an iconic structure in St Mark’s Campanile. Built in the 16th-century, the tower is topped with an angel-accented spire and a belfry gazing out to sea.

The Vaporetto

While many tourists choose to use gondolas to romantically travers the city, the Vaporetto is the more practical mode of transportation. The Vaporetto is a public waterbus which traverses the canals within Venice and travels to the nearby islands of Murano, Burano and Lido.

Venetian Carnival Masks and Workshops

The masked festival of Carnival is a powerful and popular event in Venice, with numerous shops selling unique, gorgeously-rendered masks throughout the year. There are many places in Venice which offer workshops allowing guests to craft their own mask in various styles, including traditional Venetian masks, cat-eared masks, feather-accented masks and Commedia dell‘arte theater masks.

Murano Island

Accessible by waterbus or ferry-rides, the Island of Murano is famed for it’s artistic glass factories, laboratories and storefronts. The tradition of glass-making has become a highlighted feature of the island, with many delicate, fantastic displays throughout the city. Visitors can shop for locally crafted souvenirs or visit some of the island’s unique landmarks. These include the glass-crafting museum Museo del Vetro, the mosaic floors and dragon bones of the Romanesque-style Church of Santa Maria and San Donato, the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Peter the Martyr (Chiesa di San Pietro Martire) filled with Renaissance artworks, the abstract blue artwork “Comet Glass Star” at Campo Santo Stefano and the incredible, traditional Murano Glass Factories.

Giardini Pubblici

With space at a premium on Venice’s interconnected islands, peaceful green spaces are rare. The Giardini Pubblici is the largest park in Venice, containing peaceful walking paths, small picnic areas, numerous artworks and views of the Grand Canal. The area also provides access to the highest concentration of museums in Venice.

The Venice International Pavilions

Located in Giardini della Biennale, this space hosts some of the international culture venue-museums of Venice. This includes the Biennale di Venezia international culture exhibition, the Nordic Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, the Finnish Pavilion, the British Pavilion, the US Pavilion, the Russian Pavilion and several others.

Lido di Venezia

This is an a 11-kilometer barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon, home to a series of relaxing beaches, long streets and shaded outdoor venues. Visitors often enjoy walking along the central street, Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta, which leads past shops to the beaches. The island can be reached via ferry or waterbus. Other popular spaces to visit on the island include the Alberoni Sand Dune Oasis, the Spiaggia degli Alberoni sheltered swimming space, the photogenic Faro di San Nicolò red lighthouse and the Paradise Beach area on the northern portion of the island.

Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro

This splendid palace on the Grand Canal is filled with ornate walls, 15th-centruy designs and artworks by Titian and Van Dyck.

San Servolo Island Musuem

This is a somewhat creepy disused mental institution. Originally, the site was a quiet monastery before being repurposed as a hospital, first for injured soldiers, then for the mentally ill. The site contains an anatomy room, 18th-century pharmacy display and restraint items used on patients.

The Flooded Crypt of San Zaccaria

This old, elegantly ornate church contains an underground crypt which is consistently flooded with water from the surrounding canals. The effect is beautiful and somewhat haunting. Visitors can pay a small fee to enter, exact change is appreciated.

Piraeus Lion

The Piraeus Lion was an extremely famous artifact which once guarded the port of Athens in the 4th century BCE. The figure was looted by the Venetian Navy in 1687, at which point naval officers noted strange, indecipherable markings upon the lion’s stone hide. It wasn’t until the 19th century the carvings were deciphered, revealed to be Viking runes a mercenary had scratched into the lion’s shoulder a millennia ago. The statue stands as a nexus of incalculable history, knotting together eras and cultures of  Ancient Greece, La Serenissima, Viking mercenaries, the Ottomans, the Byzantine Empire and Venice herself.

Villa Pisani’s Maze

The Villa Pisani National Museum is a half-hour away from Venice on mainland Italy. The Villa is known for unique art exhibitions, frescoed ceilings, large gardens and ornate canal-side, late-Baroque palace structures. However, the most famous portion of the venue is an enormous, circular hedge maze. The maze is considered among the most beautiful, semi-challenging intact hedge-mazes in the world.

The Borges Labyrinth

Located on San Giorgio Maggiore Island, this half-mile-long maze is dedicated to Jorge Luis Borges, a famed writer with close ties to Venice. The city of Venice donated the maze to the writer due to his use of mazes and labyrinths as themes in his works. The maze can be reached by vaporetto from Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square). Over 3,000 boxwood plants are used to create the walls of the maze.

Lazzaretto Nuovo

Best reached by taking a vaporetto from the Fondamenta Nuova, this is a peaceful island in the Venice Lagoon. However, the island was once one of several plague quarentine areas. As a major shipping hub with tightly-packed communities, diseases were a constant menace to Venice. People exhibiting symptoms would frequently be quarantined on nearby islands. This was especially true during the rise of the Black Death, which saw thousands of people sequestered. An especially unique legend of the island comes from the “Shroud Eater,” an Italian vampire-ghoul which dined on the sluggish blood of recently-buried victims. The legend arose after excavations found a buried skeleton with a brick shoved into the skull’s jaw, the prescribed method for permanently ending a Shroud Eater.

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