The best books on Venice

In a nutshell: from practical guides to the definitive history and the novels that catch the city's mood, this is the reading list to work through before you go. Back it with the city's history and its legends, so the pages line up with what you will actually see.

Venice has inspired more great books than almost any city on earth. Here is our curated reading list, in English, split into practical guides, history and the novels that will change the way you walk the calli.

Practical travel guides

• ✦Lonely Planet Venice & the Veneto - the most comprehensive practical guide, strong on neighbourhoods, eating and the lagoon islands
• ✦Rick Steves Venice - the best guide for first-timers: opinionated, practical, full of walking tours and honest advice
• ✦DK Eyewitness Venice - the most visual guide, with superb cutaway illustrations of the Basilica, the Doge's Palace and the palazzi
• ✦Time Out Venice - the best for food, bars and contemporary Venice
• ✦The Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto - solid, detailed and well-balanced

History and culture

• ✦Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd - a brilliant, unconventional biography of the city by one of England's finest writers
• ✦The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt - the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil turns to Venice: the Fenice fire, the palazzi and the eccentrics
• ✦Venice by Jan Morris - the classic, poetic portrait by one of the greatest travel writers of the 20th century
• ✦A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich - the definitive one-volume history of the Republic, from foundation to Napoleon
• ✦The Venetians by Paul Strathern - a readable portrait of the people who built the Republic
• ✦Venice: A New History by Thomas F. Madden - a fresh, engaging narrative of the Serenissima

Novels set in Venice

• ✦Death in Venice by Thomas Mann - the novella that defined the city's literary image
• ✦The Aspern Papers by Henry James - a masterpiece of atmosphere set in a decaying palazzo
• ✦The Wings of the Dove by Henry James - Venice as the stage of a great moral drama
• ✦Don't Look Now by Daphne du Maurier - the chilling short story (and the film) that turned the city's alleys into suspense
• ✦The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan - dark, disorienting, unforgettable
• ✦The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato - a historical novel woven around the island's glassmakers
• ✦The City of the Sun by Julien Green - a haunting novel of the city's hidden life

Art and architecture

• ✦The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin - the 19th-century masterwork that shaped how the world sees Venetian architecture
• ✦Venice: A Documentary History by David Chambers & Brian Pullan - the Republic in its own words
• ✦Tintoretto and the Scuola di San Rocco - for the masterpiece cycle covered in our Scuole chapter