Dorsoduro is Venice's most food-friendly quarter, from cult cicchetti bars and canal-side restaurants to the city's best gelato. After dark it keeps its own rhythm, with jazz clubs, hands-on mask workshops and sleepy campo bars.
Last updated August 6, 2026
In a nutshell: where Dorsoduro eats, drinks and stays up late - cicchetti bars, the cult gianduiotto at Gelateria Nico, mask workshops, jazz nights and the artisan lanes of Calle Lunga. After eating, explore the Zattere and the waterfront or the palaces; start from the district overview.
Masks were part of everyday Venetian life long before Carnevale: as early as 1268 the law barred masked troublemakers from lobbing ovi odoriferi - eggshells filled with perfumed water - at pedestrians; doctors wore beak-shaped masks during plague seasons, and by the 18th century masked figures were a common sight. Napoleon banned masks and Carnevale together in 1797, and neither made a proper comeback until 1979. To try your hand at the tradition, head to Ca' Macana, the family-run atelier whose masks starred in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut: workshops start at €42 per person, from a single hour of mask decoration up to a 2½-hour class in making a bauta mask of your own, built from papier-mâché.
As the lighting goes down inside Venice Jazz Club, it feels like an intimate gathering at a friend's place: its in-house ensemble, the Venice Jazz Quartet, plays standards and bossa nova, concerts usually start at 9pm with cheese platters served from 7pm, and tickets, which go on sale online a week ahead, cover a first drink. Rowers, meanwhile, take over the basin when the Vogalonga takes place, usually toward the end of May into early June: this 32km 'long row' launches with close to 2,000 boats massed before the Doge's Palace, circles the islands of Burano and Murano, then finishes to a roar of cheers where it pours back into the Grand Canal - and the quay beyond the Punta della Dogana is the grandstand for the finish, and it also serves as a grandstand for the Carnevale procession of boats. Short on cash but dreaming of a gondola ride? A traghetto is the gondola-style ferry Venetians use to ferry themselves over the Grand Canal - €2 for a two-minute crossing, roughly 9am-6pm (to 5pm November to March) - and a top choice is the short hop off Punta della Dogana over to San Marco, campanile in view.
The artisan scene rewards a slow amble along Calle Lunga di San Barnaba, from the campo towards San Sebastiano: Bruno curates a sharp selection of titles spanning architecture, art and design; Dal Nono Colussi bakes cult-status fugasse; and at Arto Atelier, artists Sira Viviani - whose whimsical drawings show animals lolling in moka pots - and Lorenzo Fontana craft experimental lithographs and jewellery made of paper. Look out for Paolo Olbi's exquisite handmade journals, beloved of Hollywood royalty and New York mayors; Marisa Convento at Bottega Cini, the city's final impiraressa - a bead stringer; Signor Blum's whimsical wooden jigsaws of Venice's landmarks; and PerlaMadre Design, where the Puglia-born artisan Patrizia Iacovazzi fashions bold jewellery from colourful Murano glass. For contemporary art, the Patricia Low Gallery, opened beside Ca' Rezzonico in 2023, has shown international names including Candida Höfer, Xenia Hausner and Philip Colbert, while La Toletta SpazioEventi exhibits emerging photographers by displaying their prints on industrial shelving in a bookshop warehouse. In the canal stretch running from the Guggenheim to La Salute, look up at the mosaics sheathing Palazzo Barbarigo (1886) - glass blowers showing their work to the doge - and Palazzo Salviati (1924), with a blonde Venice enthroned.