Handpicked experience · Macau
Macau, Macau
A canal indoors under a sky fixed at late afternoon, boats built deliberately lopsided, and a district whose name is two islands that used to have sea between them.
Feel like you're in Venice at the Venetian with the Macau Gondola rides
Pose with the quirky court jesters and the boat man on the Venetian Gondola Ride
Take your whole family with you!
Get serenaded by the talented boatmen
A boat ride that is entirely weatherproof
Venetian landmarks in an order no Venetian would recognise
Gondoliers who sing as part of the job
A seat instead of a pavement, for a break in the middle of a long day
Constant light, which makes photographs easy at any hour
A gondola ride along the indoor Grand Canal at The Venetian Macao, boarding beside the Grand Canal Shoppes and gliding under replica bridges beneath a painted sky, with a gondolier who sings as they row.
Everything happens indoors on the shopping level, so weather is irrelevant and there is almost no walking involved beyond reaching the boarding point. The ride is calm and slow, and the gondoliers are auditioned as singers as well as boat handlers, which is why the canal is rarely quiet.
The bridges, the campanile and the square you pass are copies of things scattered across the real Venice, brought together into a few hundred metres. In the original, walking between them takes the better part of an afternoon and involves getting lost at least once. Here they arrive in quick succession and in an order that would make no sense to a Venetian, which is either the charm of the thing or the joke of it, depending on your temperament.
The ceiling is painted as a sky at the softest part of the afternoon, and it stays that way at ten in the morning and at midnight alike. The lighting is held at a constant level and there are no windows, so the hour of day never announces itself. Casinos have used the trick for decades; here it is applied to a canal.
A true Venetian gondola is deliberately lopsided — the left side is built noticeably longer than the right, so that the hull leans and holds a straight line against a single oar worked from one side. The steel ornament on the prow is not decoration either: its comb of teeth stands for the six historic districts of Venice, with the curved top representing the hat once worn by the city's ruler.
Gondoliers do not push off the bottom with a pole. They row, standing, with one long oar resting in a carved wooden fork called a forcola, which is shaped with several notches for different strokes. Each one is cut individually for the rower who will use it. The motion looks effortless and takes years to learn.
The whole district is reclaimed. Cotai is a compression of Coloane and Taipa, the two islands it now joins; the strip of hotels, this building among them, stands on what was a sea channel within living memory. An indoor canal on land taken from the sea has a certain symmetry to it.
Boarding is at the canal, not at a hotel, so make your own way there. The listing covers a one-hour slot, within which the ride itself is an unhurried loop. Photographs are easy throughout — the light never changes.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Entirely. The canal runs through the shopping level under a painted ceiling, so rain, heat and typhoon season make no difference to it.
Yes — they are auditioned for their voices as well as their boat handling, and singing is part of the job rather than an extra.
Because one person rows it from one side. The left side is made longer so the hull leans and tracks straight instead of turning in circles.
The ferro. Its teeth stand for the six historic districts of Venice and the curl above them for the cap once worn by the city's ruler. It also balances the weight of the rower at the stern.
No, that is punting and it belongs to other rivers. A gondolier rows standing, with the oar seated in a carved wooden fork cut individually for them.
It is Coloane and Taipa joined into one word — and into one landmass. The hotel strip stands on reclaimed ground where there was open water not very long ago.
No. You make your own way to the boarding point beside the canal, which is straightforward once you are inside the building.