Day trips from Venice

In a nutshell: three mainland cities - Padua, Vicenza and Verona - plus three wine regions, all within an easy train ride of the lagoon. If you would rather stay on water, the lagoon islands are the classic alternative, and itineraries shows how to fit a day around them.

Three of northern Italy's most rewarding cities - Padua, Vicenza and Verona - sit within 90 minutes of Venice by train, and three celebrated wine regions spread through the countryside just beyond them. Padua is a medieval university town bound up with its patron saint; Vicenza owes its harmonious face to one architect, Andrea Palladio; Verona curls around the River Adige with a Roman arena, basilicas and a Shakespearean love story. When the lagoon crowds start to wear, a morning train is the easiest escape, and a day on the mainland makes Venice feel fresh again on your return.

Padua: Giotto's chapel, a saint and the world's oldest garden

Padua's headline act is the Cappella degli Scrovegni (adult/child €15/7), one small room wrapped in Giotto's fresco cycle, painted roughly two centuries before the Sistine ceiling and widely credited with launching the Renaissance. Where earlier painters showed remote, enthroned saints, Giotto gave biblical figures human faces, recognisable gestures and everyday settings - a shift that changed how viewers saw themselves as well as how they saw art. Tickets are timed and sell out: reserve about a month ahead if you can, though cancellations sometimes free up next-day entry. Each visit lasts a quarter of an hour, so arrive early - latecomers are not refunded. You enter via Musei Civici agli Eremitani, whose painting and archaeology collections deserve a solid hour on their own; the chapel ticket also covers Palazzo Zuckermann (closed Mondays), a showcase of furniture, textiles, jewellery and an outstanding coin collection. If chapel tickets are gone, the two museums can still be combined on a joint ticket.

In the centre, between two bustling market squares, the enormous Palazzo della Ragione (adult/child €8/3) looks like a ship turned upside down. Finished in 1218, it combined the roles of council chamber, courtroom and market hall. Trading continues on the ground floor, with stalls set out beneath the two arcades. Upstairs, the immense hall called Il Salone is covered in frescoes by Giotto's followers illustrating the star-lore of Padua's professor Pietro d'Abano - a swirl of fantastical beasts, demon choirs and religious figures that stays mysterious because nothing is explained in English. At the hall's western end stands a huge 15th-century wooden horse, a copy of Donatello's bronze rider statue near St Anthony's Basilica. A little further north, Piazza della Frutta has gone over mostly to clothes and accessories; for fruit, vegetables and flowers - and a sunny late-afternoon spritz - cross to Piazza delle Erbe. Historic Caffè Pedrocchi, a landmark of Italy's historic café tradition famed for its cake counter, is open daily 8am–midnight.

For a large share of the world's Catholics, Padua means one name: St Anthony, and pilgrims still crowd the Basilica di Sant'Antonio - entry is free - to kneel at his tomb, on the nave's left side, and pay homage to his relics in the chapel behind the high altar. Four serene cloisters belong to the adjoining Franciscan friary. Work on the basilica began in 1232, within a year of Anthony's death, and continued for 78 years, yielding a striking mix: domes in the Byzantine manner and towers above red-brick Gothic walls, with Renaissance touches added inside centuries later. Among the treasures, look for Donatello's 15th-century high-altar reliefs and a 1528 fresco beside the sacristy showing Anthony preaching to fish that appear spellbound. The saint - born in 1195 in Portugal as Fernando Martins de Bulhões - took his name on entering the Franciscan order; Francis of Assisi himself spotted his gifts and put the young scholar's theological skills to work for the order. Anthony lived in Padua only for his last five years and died at 35, already credited with miracles and canonised within twelve months, which is why he is usually shown with a lily or the Christ child.

The Orto Botanico (adult/child €10/6) holds the title of the world's first botanical garden, created in 1575 by the medical faculty of Padua University to study the curative qualities of rare plants. A surprising share of everyday species entered Europe through these beds - potatoes, sunflowers, lilac, freesias, sesame, bamboo and assorted jasmines among them. Set aside about an hour for the orderly plots, the greenhouses and the botanical museum with its recreated pharmacy. Nearby, Prato della Valle is an unusual oval park that once hosted sporting events; a narrow canal rings it, bordered by 78 statues honouring the city's greats and ten empty pedestals where doges stood before Napoleon had them removed. If you plan to hit several sites, the Padova Urbs Picta Card (€28, 48 hours) covers the UNESCO-listed 14th-century frescoes and public transport; the Musei Civici combo passes bundle the Scrovegni chapel with the Eremitani and Zuckermann (€16) or the two museums alone (€11).

Vicenza: the city of Palladio

Appropriately, Palladio's adopted city is crowned at its centre with one of his creations. In 1546 he secured the commission to rebuild the crumbling 15th-century palace that sheltered the city's judges and council; what emerged, copper-roofed, is the Basilica Palladiana (adult/child €5/3), its loggia tiers carried on Tuscan and Ionic columns beneath soaring statuary. Near the western end, a statue shows Palladio inspecting his handiwork. The ground floor holds cafés, shops and a museum of jewellery; Tuesday to Sunday the ticket also opens the upper loggias and the roof terrace, with mountain views beyond the rooftops - and Fridays through Sundays, a bar does service up there. The vast central hall hosts separately ticketed exhibitions, though you can usually glimpse it from the entrance.

Palladio's final work, the Teatro Olimpico (€11), was completed after Palladio died in 1580 by Vincenzo Scamozzi, who created the remarkable stage set for the opening performance in 1585 - Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. The scenery evokes the classical city of Thebes, its streets receding in sharp false perspective towards the horizon. Essentially one magnificent room, the theatre can be seen comfortably in about 30 minutes, so read the information panels at leisure. On a hill at the edge of town, the celebrated Villa La Rotonda (adult/child €10/5) takes the form of a square block under a dome, each side carrying an identical colonnaded front - among the architect's most celebrated works, endlessly copied in Europe and America. Inside, the round central hall is frescoed from floor to cupola in trompe l'oeil; the ticket covers the principal floor, and an extra €5 covers a guided visit that adds the kitchens below. On the way back, Villa Valmarana ai Nani, named for the dwarf statues lining its walls, rewards a stop with its garden and 18th-century interiors painted by Tiepolo the elder together with his son Giandomenico. The Vicenza Card (€20 for 11 sights, €15 for four) covers the civic museums but not the two villas.

Verona: an arena, a balcony and a river bend

Rising from the edge of Piazza Brà, the Arena di Verona (adult/child €12/free) is clad in pink-tinged marble and dates from 30 CE, half a century older than Rome's Colosseum. One of the best-preserved amphitheatres anywhere, it still functions: summer evenings draw some 14,000 opera-goers onto the stone tiers, a fraction of the 30,000 who once crowded in. Only a four-arched slice of the original decorative outer ring survives - the remainder was carted off to raise the walls of the medieval town. Inside, corridors broad enough for a chariot lead into the sunlit oval, ringed by at least 50 rows of seating; the climb up is rewarded by a view over the rooftops. Half an hour is enough.

Verona's ancient forum survives as Piazza delle Erbe, still the city's central square, ringed by cafés and handsome buildings. Passing beneath the Arco della Costa means walking under a whale rib which, folklore insists, will drop onto the first completely honest person who passes below. Nearby, the Casa di Giulietta trades on a romance that never was: Juliet lived only in Shakespeare's imagination, and the house's one tangible claim is the bed from Zeffirelli's film, kept on site. The playwright, who in all likelihood never travelled to Italy, set The Taming of the Shrew in Padua, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Romeo and Juliet in Verona, and The Merchant of Venice and Othello in Venice.

Verona's biggest church - the Basilica di Sant'Anastasia (adult/child €4/free) - hides a gorgeous Gothic interior: twelve stout rose-coloured pillars hold up a vault patterned with flowers, while side altars crowd with paintings and statues. Above the Pellegrini Chapel entrance, don't miss Pisanello's storybook fresco of St George and the Princess, and find the hunchback carved on the 1495 holy-water font by Gabriele Caliari, Paolo Veronese's father. Traces of Roman Verona surround you - the Teatro Romano across the river, the partly 1st-century-BCE Ponte Pietra, the decorated Porta Borsari gateway and mosaics surfacing in a courtyard near Piazza dei Signori. Later, the city gained colonial status in 89 BCE, full town rights in 49 BCE, until the Visigoths took it in 403 CE. For the finest overview, the Funicolare di Castel San Pietro (single/return €2/3) carries you to the cypress-ringed hill above the river loop, where a bar and a generous lookout deck put the whole old town at your feet.

Art lovers and castle fans alike will find something in the Museo di Castelvecchio (adult/child €9/free), a 14th-century fortress of swallowtail battlements above the river. Carlo Scarpa's elegant 1964 additions - metal railings, grilles and stairways - open the walls to visitors, and his display design frames archaeological finds and paintings by Bellini, Tintoretto, Veronese and Carpaccio. Downstream, the candy-striped Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore (adult/child €4/free) ranks as a Romanesque treasure in alternating bands of brick and pale stone; the rose-windowed facade came later. Inside, the sanctuary is raised so the nave looks straight into the crypt, where the relics of St Zeno - an African consecrated bishop in 362 and now the city's patron - glow in the dim light. Grab the free pamphlet and hunt down the bronze doors, made in the 12th century, and Mantegna's 1457–59 triptych, whose painted fruit looks real enough to pick. Money-saving passes: the Verona Card (€27 for 24 hours) unlocks 16 sights, the Arena and Castelvecchio among them, plus free bus travel, while the Chiese Vive ticket (€8) covers the Duomo, San Fermo, Sant'Anastasia and San Zeno.

Wine country: Soave, Valpolicella and the Prosecco Hills

Three wine regions sit within reach of Venice: Soave for delicate white wines, Valpolicella for serious reds, the Prosecco Hills for sparkling. All three are lovely, green countryside dotted with historic towns. Most vineyards expect advance bookings - few welcome casual callers - so plan around the estates below, whose tasting details are online. Aim for a single estate, or two at most, rather than racing through three. A car is the best way around; Soave and Valpolicella are best reached by riding the rails to Verona and renting a car there. Within Soave's medieval ramparts, Canoso By the Glass (tastings €20–30) is the no-fuss pick, a wine bar run by the vineyard: no reservation, order food, settle on the terrace with a five-wine flight or glasses from the list, or visit the estate itself, 5km away, on weekdays for a tasting. Just outside the walls, Borgo Rocca Sveva (from €30) pours in rock-cut cellars inside a medieval hamlet, with e-bike and horseback tours of the vineyards and a stroll through its botanic garden.

Valpolicella is the heavyweight. Tenuta Santa Maria (from €26) shows you round the vines, the cellars and the 18th-century manor house - Villa Mosconi Bertani, whose frescoed chamber was built for opera performances - and pours a 'tradition' flight of a Soave, a pair of Valpolicellas plus an Amarone, or a 'selection' that brings in chardonnay and merlot. Around the villa lie eight hectares of landscaped parkland in the English manner, with lakes and orchards. Serego Alighieri (from €30) is the estate acquired in 1353 by Pietro, son of the exiled poet Dante; it remains in family hands, visits need advance booking, and horseback or e-bike rides roam the valley. Villa della Torre (€40–60) hosts tastings in a 16th-century villa for the Allegrini family, who have farmed vines in Fumane, Sant'Ambrogio and San Pietro for more than four centuries. For fizz, Bisol1542 (€10–18) has made prosecco above Valdobbiadene since 1542 across 21 generations, while PDC Cartizze (€25–35) runs a modern tasting room nearby with flights, snacks and cellar visits for parties of two or more. Reaching Valpolicella takes about 90 minutes by car from Venice; the region lies northwest of Verona, with Soave conveniently beside the motorway on the way. The hamlet of San Giorgio, perched on a hill, offers lake views and its dim 8th-century Romanesque church, or lunch at the Enoteca della Valpolicella in Fumane. Soave itself is ringed by 24 watchtowers along medieval walls that climb to a visitable castle.

With a full day and a hire car, the 220km 'Head for the Hills' loop takes about 3½ hours of driving through the Dolomite foothills - toll roads on both legs to and from Venice - and strings together four highlights. Bassano del Grappa, whose Venetian overlordship lasted from 1404 to 1815, is a handsome riverside town with a long printing tradition and the grappa distilled from winemaking leftovers; Palladio's covered wooden bridge, the Ponte degli Alpini, spans the green Brenta; Monte Grappa rises behind it. Asolo is a medieval hilltop town handed to Caterina Corner, queen of Cyprus, as a reward for stepping down from the throne; see the church plus the remnants of her castle, then climb to La Rocca for sweeping views. Villa di Maser (adult/child €9/4.50), dating from the 1500s, pairs Palladio's elegant architecture with Paolo Veronese's playful trompe l'oeil frescoes; next door, Casa Diamante pours the estate's wines. End at Conegliano, the prosecco town, whose 10th-century castle crowns the hill above the modern centre, overlooking the Prosecco Hills - then it's under an hour's drive home to Venice.