The city's green lung and its giant contemporary-art exhibition, plus the Ocean Space gallery in the shell of San Lorenzo.
Last updated August 14, 2026
In a nutshell: the Giardini Pubblici are Venice's only true park and, since the early 1900s, the home of the Biennale - art in even years, architecture in odd ones, running April to November. The Ocean Space gallery fills the empty church of San Lorenzo. Back to the Castello overview or the Arsenale.
The Giardini Pubblici, the only true green lung of the city, in extension as in beauty, were created in the early years of the 19th century at the wish of Napoleon, who ordered the reclamation of the area and the destruction of some small churches. Since the beginning of the 20th century they have been the seat of the International Art Biennale: from roughly April to November the city hosts its great exhibition, which alternates between contemporary art and architecture from one year to the next, spread through the Giardini and the Arsenale. The occasion also spawns temporary art shows, concerts and cultural events all over town; if you are in Venice during those seasons, you can wander among the national pavilions and enjoy contemporary art performances of every kind.
La Biennale di Venezia has outgrown its name: the season now runs from April to November every year, art in even-numbered years and architecture in odd ones, with theatre, dance and music programmed annually and the Venice International Film Festival operating under the same institution. The Giardini's 29 permanent national pavilions amount to a living survey of 20th-century architecture: the tile-covered Hungarian Pavilion (1909), the black-granite Australian Pavilion (2015) - the first new building in the garden for two decades - Scarpa's raw-concrete-and-glass Venezuelan Pavilion (1956), and the Serbian Pavilion (1938), which still carries 'Jugoslavia' carved on its front. Day tickets run €30, three-day passes €40 and weekly passes €50, with generous early-bird reductions. Venues close on Mondays; queues build at the Arsenale entrance on Campo de la Tana before the 11am opening, so start at the quieter Giardini instead - and with cafes, bars, shops and toilets in every venue, there is no need to leave.
Inside the vast, empty shell of the church of San Lorenzo - closed for nearly a century after WWI bombing - Ocean Space offers the TBA-21 Academy a home for large conceptual installations on environmental and social questions, alongside lectures, workshops and events that change from year to year; entry is free, Wednesday to Sunday, March to October. San Lorenzo itself was founded in the 9th century and rebuilt in the 16th, its brick facade left unfinished; its odd double-sided altar once divided the lay congregation from the Benedictine nuns of the adjoining convent. Tradition places Marco Polo and his father Niccolò in graves here, though the explorer's sarcophagus is said to have gone astray during the rebuilding, and decades of excavation have never found a trace of it.