Pocket Rough Guide Venice (Travel Guide eBook)

Description

The best Venice has to offer - in your pocket. Pocket Rough Guide Venice is your essential guide to Europe's most romantic city, with stunning photography and in-depth accounts. Whether you are staying for the weekend or enjoying a short break, our itineraries help you plan your trip, and the Best of section picks out the highlights you won't want to miss - whether that means hitting the big name sights of the Basilica di San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale, gliding along the canals in a gondala or escaping the crowds in one of the city's off-beat districts.

Divided by neighbourhood for easy navigation, the Places section is written in Rough Guide's trademark honest and informative style, with reviews of the must-see sights and our pick of the places to eat, drink and sleep for every budget, from traditional tucked-away trattorias to stylish aperitivo bars, and from staying in a seventeenth-century palazzo to sleeping in a charming, family-run bed and breakfast.

Informations

• Publié par: Apa Publications
• Date de parution: 01 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780241258194
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 56 Mo

Extrait

Contents HOW TO USE INTRODUCTION TO VENICE ITINERARIES BEST OF VENICE PLACES 1. San Marco: the Piazza 2. San Marco: north of the Piazza 3. San Marco: west of the Piazza 4. Dorsoduro 5. San Polo and Santa Croce 6. Cannaregio 7. Central Castello 8. Eastern Castello 9. The Canal Grande 10. The Northern Islands 11. The Southern Islands ACCOMMODATION ESSENTIALS MAPS AND SMALL PRINT How to Use How to Use Table of contents



How to use this Rough Guide ebook
This Pocket Rough Guide to Venice is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guarantees you make the most of your trip, whether you’re spending an afternoon or a few days away.
From the table of contents , you can click straight to the main sections of the ebook. Start with the Introduction , which gives you a flavour of Venice, with details of when to visit and what to see, followed by helpful day-by-day and themed Itineraries . The Best of Venice picks out the highlights you definitely won’t want to miss, from admiring the mosaic-encrusted Basilica di San Marco to indulging your sweet tooth at one of the city’s tempting gelaterie . The Places chapters are your comprehensive neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood guide to the city, with full-colour maps featuring all the sights and listings. Finally, Accommodation recommends the best hotels, B&Bs and hostels and Essentials covers all the practical information you’ll need, from public transport to opening hours and festivals. A handy chronology and useful language list round off the guide.
Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. There are also thumbnails below more detailed maps – in these cases, you can opt to “zoom left/top” or “zoom right/bottom” or view the full map. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.

Introduction to Venice

Founded 1500 years ago on a cluster of mudflats in the centre of the lagoon, Venicerose to become Europe’s main trading post between the West and the East, and at itsheight controlled an empire that extended from the Dolomites to Cyprus. The fabricof the present-day city, astonishingly well preserved, bears testimony to Venice’sformer grandeur in virtually every square and street.
In the heyday of the Venetian Republic, some two hundred thousand people lived in Venice,three times its present population. Merchants from Europe and western Asia maintainedwarehouses here; transactions in the banks and bazaars of the Rialto dictated the valueof commodities all over the continent; in the dockyards of the Arsenale the workforcewas so vast that a warship could be built and fitted out in a single day; and the PiazzaSan Marco was thronged with people here to set up deals or report to theRepublic’s government. Nowadays it’s no longer a buzzing metropolis butrather the embodiment of a fabulous past, dependent for its survival largely on thepeople who come to marvel at its relics.

The Campanile, San Marco

Best place for a picnic

The beauty of the cityscape and the price of restaurants make picnicking an enticingproposition in Venice – but there are strict by-laws against picnics in thecity squares. So buy provisions at Rialto market then hop on a vaporetto toGiardini, where you’ll find shade, a bit of greenery, and a fabulous panoramaof Venice and the lagoon.

View from the Giardini Pubblici
   The monuments that draw the largest crowds are the Basilica di San Marco – the mausoleumof the city’s patron saint – and the Palazzo Ducale or Doge’s Palace. Certainly theseare the most imposing structures in the city, but a roll-call of the churches worthvisiting would feature more than a dozen names. Many of the city’s treasures remain inthe churches for which they were created, but a sizeable number have been removed to oneor other of Venice’s museums, with the Accademia holding the lion’s share. This culturalheritage is a source of endless fascination, but you should also discard youritineraries for a day and just wander – the anonymous parts of Venice reveal as much ofthe city as its well-known attractions.

Traghetto on the Canal Grande
   The historic centre of Venice is made up of 118 islands, tied together by some fourhundred bridges to form an amalgamation that’s divided into six large administrativedistricts known as sestieri , three on each side of the CanalGrande.

When to visit

Venice’s tourist season is very nearly an all-year affair. Peak season, when hotelrooms are difficult to come by at short notice, is from April toOctober ; try to avoid July and August , when the climatebecomes oppressively hot and clammy. The other two popular spells are the Carnevale (leading up to Lent) and the weeks on each side of Christmas .
   For the ideal combination of comparative peace and a mild climate, the two or threeweeks immediately preceding Easter are perhaps best. November and December are somewhat less reliable: some days bring fogsthat make it difficult to see from one bank of the Canal Grande to the other. If youwant to see the city at its quietest, January is the month to go –take plenty of warm clothes, though, as the winds off the Adriatic can be savage,and you should be prepared for floods throughout the winter. This acquaalta , as Venice’s seasonal flooding is called, has been an element ofVenetian life for centuries, but nowadays it’s far more frequent than it used to be:between October and late February it’s not uncommon for flooding to occurseveral days in succession.
< Back to Introduction to Venice
Venice at a glance

Eating and drinking
Near the Piazza the quality of restaurants is generally poor and prices inflated.However, out in the quieter zones Venice has an increasing number of excellent restaurants , in which fresh fish and seafood predominate.The three best areas to head for are Dorsoduro (San Barnabaand Campo Santa Margherita), the Rialto district and northern Cannaregio .
   One of the most appealing aspects of Venetian social life is encapsulated in thephrase “ andemo a ombra ”, literally an invitation to go intothe shade, but in fact an invitation for a drink – more specifically, a smallglass of wine (an ombra ); an enoteca is abar specializing in wines. Also distinctively Venetian is the bácaro , a bar that offers a range of snacks called cicheti (or ciccheti ); usually€1–2.50 per portion, they may include polpette (smallbeef and garlic meatballs), carciofini (artichoke hearts) and polipi (baby octopus or squid). Many bácari also produce one or two main dishes, such as risotto or seafoodpasta. Excellent food is also served at many osterie , thesimplest of which have just three or four tables, while others have sizeabledining areas. And to further blur the division between places to eat and drink,Venice’s restaurants often have a separate street-side bar. Venetians tend toeat early: don’t turn up after 8.30pm.

Nightlife
Venice is notorious for its lack of nightlife , though it doeshave a good number of late-opening bars, some of which have live music or DJs,though the venues tend to be small and there are strict by-laws againstlate-night noise. The best of these are in Dorsoduro, where the university isbased, and the Rialto has also livened up recently. Music in Venice, to allintents and purposes, means classical music – though the Teatro Malibran doesstage concerts by Italian rock bands from time to time. The top-bracket music venues are La Fenice, the Teatro Malibran and the TeatroGoldoni, all in the San Marco sestiere .

Shopping
The main retail zones in Venice are the Mercerie (immediatelynorth of Piazza San Marco) and Calle Larga XXII Marzo (west ofthe Piazza). Nowadays, they are dominated by famous Italian brands such asGucci, Prada and Trussardi. In quieter parts of the city, notably in San Polo,some authentically Venetian outlets and workshops are still in operation. Themanufacture of exquisite decorative papers is a distinctively Venetian skill;small craft studios in various parts of the city continue to produce beautifulhandmade bags and shoes; and of course there are lots of shops selling glass,lace and Carnival masks – the quintessential souvenir.

Our recommendations for where to eat, drink and shop are listed at the end ofeach Places chapter.
< Back to Introduction to Venice
Itineraries

Day one in Venice
Day two in Venice
Off the beaten track
On the water

Day one in Venice

1 Basilica di San Marco Begin at the heart of the city, the Piazza San Marco andthe Basilica – and get here early, before the queues for the cathedral buildup.

Pause for coffee
Rosa Salva is an excellent option, not far from the Piazza (picture abovecentre).
2 Palazzo Ducale Explore the Doge’s Palace, a vast and fascinating building,which will take up most of the rest of the morning.

Lunch
Ramble west, away from the Piazza itself, to Al Bacareto , which has been going for decades, and is alwaysdependable.
3 Santo Stefano and Santa Maria delGiglio Loop back towards the Piazza, dropping in at these twochurches, and maybe window-shopping on Calle Larga XXII Marzo, the mostupmarket street in the city.
4 Correr Museum, Libreriaand Archeological Museum The rambling Correr museum gives you some essentialhistorical background – and it has a fine art