Handpicked experience · Venice
Venice, Italy
Three hours in the two buildings where the Venetian republic told the world what it wanted believed about itself, including the balcony most visitors never reach.
Reserved entry and a guided visit to St Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace
Two of the floating city's defining buildings, with the stories behind them
The state apartments and the Hall of the Great Council at the palace, with a guide
A walk across the Bridge of Sighs
This is the legendary Venice in the strict sense of the word: a church assembled from the spoils of a sacked empire and a palace where a committee ran a state for a thousand years. The two stand at right angles on the same square, and between them they hold most of what the republic wanted remembered — and a few things it did not.
The visit covers the interior of the basilica and the upper level that opens onto the front of the building, then the state rooms of the palace next door and the covered crossing at the back of it.
The reason the upper level is worth the stairs. Four gilded bronze horses stand over the entrance; they came from the racecourse of Constantinople, taken when a crusading fleet financed by Venice sacked the city in 1204 instead of continuing to the Holy Land. Napoleon removed them to Paris in 1797 and they came back in 1815. In the 1980s the originals were brought indoors because exhaust fumes were eating the metal, so what stands outside now is a set of replicas — and the real ones are a few metres away, inside, at eye level.
Said before you pack. No rucksack or bag of any size is admitted to the basilica, and there is no cloakroom at the door. Anything larger than a small handbag has to be left at a storage point in a side street around the corner, which is not far but takes a quarter of an hour you have not planned for and separates people from their group. Come with nothing you cannot put in a pocket.
Worth watching your feet for. The marble pavement rises and dips across the whole nave in long shallow waves. That is not a design; it is a thousand years of the building settling unevenly onto the wooden piles driven into the mud beneath it. The mosaic patterns have deformed with it and were never relaid.
Upstairs in the palace, a frieze of portraits runs around the top of the largest room, one for every doge in order. One of them is a black panel. Marin Falier held the office for seven months in 1355, attempted a coup against the council that had elected him, and was beheaded on the palace staircase; the council then had his likeness replaced with a painted cloth bearing a line recording that this is the space of a man removed for his crimes. It has stayed that way for six hundred and seventy years.
A myth worth losing. The enclosed crossing at the back was built around 1600 to move prisoners between the courts and the cells, and the people crossing it were overwhelmingly petty offenders on short sentences. The story that condemned men sighed at their last sight of Venice through its windows was made up by Byron more than two hundred years later, when the republic was already gone. The name has stuck to it ever since.
The practical value of the eight o'clock entry. The square in front is one of the most crowded places in Europe from mid-morning until dusk, and the palace at opening is close to empty. If your booking includes the earliest entry, take it seriously and be there — arriving at ten instead means seeing the same rooms over other people's shoulders.
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.
No. They were moved indoors in the 1980s because pollution was corroding them. The set outside is a replica; the originals stand inside on the upper level, close enough to see the tooling.
No, and there is no cloakroom at the door. Anything bigger than a small handbag must be left at a storage point in a side street nearby, which takes about fifteen minutes and often separates people from their group.
The building has settled unevenly over a thousand years onto the wooden piles beneath it, and the marble pavement has followed. The waves are original and have never been relaid.
A doge erased. Marin Falier lost his head on the palace staircase in 1355 after turning on the very body that had elected him, and the council answered by hanging a painted cloth where his face belonged, carrying a line that explains the gap.
Mostly not. It was built around 1600 to move minor offenders between courts and cells. The romantic story about a last view of Venice was invented by Byron two centuries later.
Very much. The square is among the most crowded places in Europe from mid-morning onward, and the palace at opening time is nearly empty.