Best of Venice tour: highlights and hidden gems

Let’s unveil the secrets of San Marco and Castello districts, discover highlights and hidden gems with the best of Venice tour. Be ready to discover symbols of the past and of nowadays during my best of Venice tour!

If you are a curious traveller and it’s your first time in Venice for sure you’d like to have answers to all these questions:
Why was Venice built on water? When was Venice built? Why does St. Mark’s Church look so Oriental? Is Venice sinking?

I will lead you through the millennium of life of the Serenissima Republic.

So, let’s discover the past full of charm of this unique city and its intriguing present. We will explore Piazza San Marco, its origins, as well as the history of the authentic Castello district.

I’ll tell you anecdotes about the history of Venice and and many stories about hidden gems through the local point of view!

Venice is the most romantic and unique city on the water of the world. I wanna show you its real soul, helping to discover the essence

An idea of our itinerary

Let’s get the authentic athmosphere of Venice by walking to the main sites of St Mark’s and discovering hidden gems in Castello: what we had in the square in the past?

Let’s discover what changed during the centuries and St. Mark’s won’t have secrets for you! We will pass through 2 of our 6 sestieri.

Since 1170 the city has been divided into six areas: San Marco, Castello, Cannaregio, Dorsoduro, San Polo and Santa Croce.

Let’s discover all the secrets of San Marco square. All the squares of Venice are called “campi” except the most important of all, Piazza San Marco, Saint Mark’s square.

It is so famous but I am sure you don’t know many incredible stories and you didn’t notice special details. Did you know that the belltower is almost 100 metres high? The very first construction dates back to 888 but suddenly on July 14th, 1902 it fell down.

The tower you see nowadays is one of the newest building of Venice, built on 1912!

We will walk through theback streets and we will see  the Bridge of Sighs from a different point of view. We will learn the origin of the name: the sighs of the prisoners as they walked and crossed the bridge.

Let’s move to Castello the authentic residential area of Venice still full of Venetians.

We will  discover what’s happened during the black plaque period! I let you learn our past and the art and the traditions of this unique city. Then? We will visit Campo Santi Giovanni and Paolo.

This campo was very important because the Venetian pantheon is located here, this is one of the largest churches of Venice that venetians call San Zanipolo (from Zani=Giovanni and Polo=Paolo).

Even the funerals of the Dogi happened here. In the center of the campo there is an equestrian monument by Verrocchio, Leonardo da Vinci’s master. This is Bartolomeo Colleoni, a condottiere who served the Serenissima Republic of Venice.

On the left of the campo the building was once the Scuola Grande of St. Mark’s. Now it is the most beautiful hospital of the world.

Duration

This tour lasts approx 2 hours and 30 minutes during which we keep to the city centre.
Since this tour is 100% customizable you might decide to tour in other areas, such as Cannaregio or Dorsoduro districts, just let me know!

Venice is not such a big town and almost everything is at walking distance, but it is a slow city.

During this tour I will give you many tips.

We will speak about about museums, exhibitions, concerts, public transportation, where to eat and drink like a localhow to move around and for sure also what to should avoid to act as a real Venetian!