San Lazzaro's Armenian monks, the garden-cemetery of San Michele, the layered history of San Servolo and the green silence of San Francesco del Deserto.
In a nutshell: a ring of smaller islands circles Venice - Palladio's San Giorgio Maggiore, the Armenian monks of San Lazzaro, the cemetery of San Michele and the green silence of San Francesco del Deserto. Most are a short vaporetto ride from the main islands; see also day trips and practical tips.
Beyond Murano, Burano and Torcello, a ring of smaller islands circles Venice, each with its own character, its own history and its own silence. Here the Venetians buried their dead, sheltered refugees and prayed in solitude - and here, directly across the water from St Mark's, one of the most beautiful churches in the city hides in plain sight.
The dreamy church-topped island you can see from the waterfront by St Mark's Square is only a five-minute boat ride away: line 2 from San Zaccaria, dock B, direction Piazzale Roma, leaves every 12 minutes, and a single vaporetto ticket (valid 75 minutes) covers the round trip if you keep the visit short. The church is free and open daily 9:00–19:00 (8:30–18:00 from November to March); the elevator up the bell tower costs €8 and runs daily 10:00–18:00 - it may close for lunch 13:00–14:00 in the off season and never runs during Sunday Mass (11:00, when sightseers are asked to stay out; in winter Mass moves to a heated side chapel). Allow an hour for the visit; information +39 041 522 7827, www.abbaziasangiorgio.it.
The church is the work of Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), whose treatises on classical architecture shaped building across England and America - which is why 'Palladian' became a byword for Greco-Roman grace. His facade combines two temple-front motifs: four tall columns under a triangular pediment mark the high central nave, superimposed on the lower side aisles behind it, and above rises a dome with the figure of St George aloft, flag in hand. The campanile answers the great Campanile of St Mark's across the water, yet the whole composition feels startlingly un-Venetian - a piece of classical antiquity set down in a Byzantine city.
Inside, Palladio's taste rules: white walls (his favourite colour), clear glass instead of stained, and a clarity and mathematical calm that Venice rarely offers. The main altar is topped with a bronze globe of the planet - a striking statement from the age of Columbus and the Enlightenment that the Christian message was universal - while God above wears a triangular halo, marking the Trinity. Flanking the altar hang two late masterpieces by Tintoretto. The Last Supper (1592–1594), on the right, sets the table diagonally across a tiled floor in a theatrical rush of servants, cats and wispy angels; a blazing lamp throws supernatural light on a Christ who serves the first Eucharist with both hands, a beggar is fed at the far left, and a devilish figure at the right refuses the communion wafers. On the left, the Manna from Heaven (1591–1592) shows the dawn after a night of storm, with bread falling from heaven onto the hungry Israelites below - an illustration of the monastic rule of work and prayer.
Behind the altar, the choir holds 82 walnut stalls, richly carved, where the Benedictine monks - on the island since AD 982, expelled in 1807 and returned on a smaller scale in the 20th century - sang the Divine Office; the barrel-vaulted ceiling and apse were designed to amplify the chant. Elsewhere, look for Jacopo Bassano's Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds, with the newborn glowing against the dark; a carved Crucifix once attributed to Brunelleschi; and two works by Tintoretto's son Domenico - a static St Benedict and Other Saints and a Stoning of St Stephen that show the family talent without the father's flair for drama. Near the bell tower entrance stands the original 18th-century angel that once topped the tower: laminated wood sheathed in lead, struck and shattered by lightning in 1993, then pieced back together by restorers.
The bell tower offers one of the best panoramas in Venice, and it is far less crowded than the Campanile of St Mark's. To the north lies the city skyline with the Arsenale basin and the Giardini, where the Biennale alternates art and architecture; beyond stretch San Michele with its cypresses, Murano, Burano with its leaning tower and Torcello. To the south, the long, narrow Lido acts as the natural breakwater, with the MOSE flood barriers at its far end, and San Servolo's plain white building - an 18th-century asylum, now a university - sits between. To the west lies the Giudecca - refuge of Michelangelo in his exile - with the Cipriani hotel, the old Molino Stucky flour mill reborn as a Hilton, the great dome of La Salute and the golden globe of the Punta della Dogana. Watch the boats below respect the lagoon speed limits (5 kph on small canals, 7 on the Grand Canal, 11 around the island) and try to be up here at noon, when the bells ring out at full voice.
Don't rush away: a short stroll around the left side of the church brings you to the little harbourside San Giorgio Café, a rare tourist-free terrace over the marina (daily 10:00–20:00, off-season 11:00–15:00). In the pink building just beyond it, Le Stanze del Vetro is a super-modern exhibition space for art glass, historical and contemporary, with free entry (Thursday–Tuesday 10:00–19:00, closed Wednesdays). The Cini Foundation, which occupies part of the Benedictine complex, runs one-hour audioguide tours of the monastery and its modern art at €15 - book online in advance - and escorted visits are sometimes arranged from the bell tower ticket office.
Quite apart from its educational merits, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini is an architectural tour de force: Renaissance cloisters, an elaborate garden maze and contemporary conceptual structures set within a private woodland. It can only be visited on a set of three guided tours, each lasting 45 minutes, offered at fixed times and mixable on combination tickets (one tour €15, two €22, all three €28; closed Wednesdays). The must-see tour covers the foundation itself, occupying the bulk of San Giorgio's historic abbey: you are given a headset in your chosen language and led through the complex starting in a magnificent cloister designed by Palladio. In the refectory hangs an extraordinary full-size, ultra-high-quality digital copy of Veronese's vast Wedding Feast at Cana (1563) - the original was looted by Napoleon in 1797 and now resides in the Louvre. The industrialist Vittorio Cini, a survivor of Dachau, acquired the derelict abbey in 1951 and restored it in memory of his son Giorgio, who died in a plane crash in 1949. A second tour, really only for dedicated design buffs, visits the Vatican Chapels, conceptual structures by contemporary architects erected as the Holy See's contribution to the 2018 Architecture Biennale, set within a forested park secluded behind a gate at the rear of the island. The third tour takes in the Borges Labyrinth, an intricate boxwood maze inspired by a short story by the Argentinian writer, with headsets playing a soundtrack composed specifically for the site; visits start with a view over the maze from the impressive Nuova Manica Lunga library, which occupies the monks' former dormitory block. Weekend tours include access to an ornate 17th-century library designed by Baldassare Longhena, reserved for students midweek.
Two more details reward the curious. Tintoretto's final work, the Deposition of Christ (1594), hangs in a side chapel that is only open for Mass or on abbey tours - to see it, book via [email protected] or enquire at the campanile ticket desk. And behind the main altar of the basilica, look for the intricately carved choir stalls and two outstanding late works by Jacopo Tintoretto: the present basilica was built between 1565 and 1610, and its 60m campanile (€8, €5 for children, lift included) is reached from a corridor at the rear of the church.
Few minor islands are still inhabited, and none is as well cared for as San Lazzaro degli Armeni. The Republic first used the island as a hospital for lepers; when the disease died out, the island was abandoned for about two centuries, until Armenian monks fleeing the Turks took refuge here at the beginning of the 1700s. The congregation grew around Mechitar - 'the Consoler', religious name of the fugitive monk Manug di Pietro - and the Republic granted the island to the community in concession, an early example of Venetian tolerance that was amply repaid. Today the monastery shelters works by Tiepolo and Ricci, a library rich in rare manuscripts - Lord Byron came here often to study Armenian - and the Mechitarist Museum, with archaeological finds of Armenian, Greek and Indian art, goldsmith's work and ceramics from the 16th and 17th centuries, a 3,500-year-old Egyptian mummy among the best-preserved known in the world, a 4,000-year-old cat statue and a golden Tibetan prayer tablet. The press set up in 1789 is still at work, able to print in many oriental languages.
Access is by tour only, conducted by the multilingual monks themselves, who amply demonstrate the institution's reputation for scholarship. In the 18th century the monks set up a polyglot printing press and translated many scientific and literary works into and out of Armenian, publishing 3,000 books in a variety of languages. Tours pass through the cloister, refectory, library, museum and glittering church, taking in a ceiling fresco by Tiepolo and a headless Roman statue along the way - and in 2019 a doctoral student on a tour spotted a dagger on display that proved to be 5,000 years old. The room dedicated to the memory of Lord Byron, who spent six months here in 1816 helping the monks prepare an English–Armenian dictionary, features an Egyptian mummy and a pair of 15th-century Indian thrones as its quirky main exhibits; true to his eccentric nature, Byron was often spotted swimming from the island to the Grand Canal. The vaporetto sign on the island, in Armenian, is the only foreign-language sign in Venice. Take the 3.10pm line 20 from San Zaccaria B to arrive in time for the regular tour; reservations are essential and donations are welcomed - the easiest way to book is through the email link on the monastery website.
A few Franciscan friars still live here, as they have for centuries. Tradition holds that St Francis of Assisi, returning from Palestine, stopped on this islet near Torcello - then called Due Vigne - to pray alone, and later sent a group of friars to the place that had given him such peace. After the saint's death in 1228 the island's owner raised a church in his honour and donated the land to the Franciscan order. The community abandoned the island in 1420 when the marshy conditions brought malaria, earning it the name 'of the desert'; the friars returned, restored the church and convent, and remained until 1806, when Napoleon suppressed the order and turned the buildings into powder magazines. In 1856 Emperor Francis I of Austria gave the island to the Patriarch of Venice, who entrusted it to the friars once more. Today the restored convent stands in an oasis of green silence, and the friars welcome visitors seeking a quiet moment.
From the south side of Burano you can spot the little island on the horizon, its bell tower protruding from a dark ring of cypresses. The best way to visit is to book a seat with Laguna Fla: its traditional bragozzo fishing boat departs from near the Burano vaporetto stop at 2.30pm, Tuesday through Sunday (return ticket €10, €5 for children), and takes around 15 minutes to reach the island. While the captain doesn't speak English, email communication is good, and the company will let the friars know you're coming. A friar greets you at the door and tours you around - don't count on him speaking English either. As poverty is a major part of the Franciscan ethos, the friary is simple and there's no important art to see; the tour takes in two cloisters, a chapel and the pretty garden, with interesting black-and-white photographs of tonsured friars on display. The boat departs an hour later, getting you back to Burano shortly after 4pm.
The Calbana family raised a church dedicated to San Servolo here between 764 and 804, with an annexed convent; Benedictine nuns arrived in 1109 and stayed five centuries, until 1615. In 1647 the complex was offered to the 200 Benedictine, Dominican and Franciscan nuns of Candia (Crete), refugees from the Turkish conquest, who remained until their community died out and the convent closed in 1716. With the island nearly uninhabited, the Senate turned the former convent into a military hospital to cope with the soldiers of the war against the Turks; the hospitaler fathers of San Giovanni di Dio (today's Fatebenefratelli) took charge of the 400 patients, and the island's pharmacy produced its own medicines. Later San Servolo became a psychiatric hospital where patients were often confined for life, until Law 180 of 1978 closed Italy's asylums. The Province of Venice then transformed the island into a centre of formation and cultural dialogue - a different fate from the commercial development of the other lagoon islands. Visits can be booked by phone daily 9:30–17:00 (Fridays until 15:30) at +39 041 5240119.
San Servolo is now the main campus of Venice International University - your vaporetto will likely be full of students - and visitors are welcome to wander the park-like grounds, with their exotic palms, mature trees and interesting sculptures scattered about, and to dine in the campus cafe and restaurant; there is often an exhibition to check out as well. The island is also home to one of Venice's most poignant specialist museums: from 1725 until 1978 it served as an institution for mentally ill men, and the Insane Asylum Museum (Museo del Manicomio, €7, reduced €5) pulls no punches, in either its name or its contents. Visits start with a 30-minute guided tour taking in the church, an 18th-century pharmacy and a dissection room full of skulls and preserved brains, then a small museum displays a disturbing array of paraphernalia once used on patients - chains, cages for ice showers and early electro-therapy machines. The island is reached by vaporetto line 20, which departs every 40 minutes from San Zaccaria B; the journey takes 10 minutes. On Wednesday and Thursday, museum tours are only offered at 11.30am and 2.45pm; from Friday to Sunday you can visit the museum anytime between 9.45am and 4.30pm.
San Michele became Venice's cemetery around 1870, when two nearby islands - San Cristoforo and San Michele - were joined into one. The latter had belonged to the Camaldolese order until Napoleon's arrival; its monastery, built between 1469 and 1535, hides a beautiful Gothic cloister. The island reads more like a garden than a graveyard, full of flowers and birdsong, and its best-known residents are the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, the composer Igor Stravinsky and the poet Ezra Pound, buried in the Protestant and Orthodox sections. Hours and boat connections are covered in the lagoon islands chapter.
Connected to Burano by a long wooden bridge, Mazzorbo is so often mistaken for a suburb of its neighbour that its few hundred residents go almost unnoticed. Yet its Latin name, Maiurbium - 'major city' - recalls a much grander past: a once-important trading centre with no fewer than five parishes and five monasteries, institutions that often educated the children of the Venetian nobility and sheltered art by masters such as Paolo Veronese. Napoleon's suppressions and the centuries did their work, but the 14th-century Romanesque-Gothic church of Santa Caterina survives, along with a row of Gothic houses along the main canal - and the church campanile holds the oldest bell of the lagoon, dated 1318. Most of the island is now cultivated, with gardens and sports facilities where Burano's crowds spill over for a quieter picnic.
The long island facing the Zattere across the wide Giudecca Canal has two souls - an aristocratic past of Palladio churches and a working-class present of brick factories and artists' studios. Its most famous building is the Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore, the exquisite centrepiece of the waterfront, born out of intense grief: between 1575 and 1577 nearly 47,000 Venetians - almost a third of the entire population, the great painter Titian among them - died of bubonic plague, and the shellshocked survivors commissioned their go-to architect, Andrea Palladio, to design a church of thanksgiving. It was completed in 1592, after Palladio's death, by Antonio da Ponte of Rialto Bridge fame. There is a darkness to much of the artwork - even a joyful scene such as Francesco Bassano's Nativity is immersed in gloom, and Paolo Piazza's monochrome Venice's Offering for Liberation from the Plague of 1575–77 (1619) hangs high above the entry door. The church's relative austerity reflects the Capuchin friary attached to it, an order committed to poverty: Palladio kept the interior deliberately simple and airy, with light streaming through high thermal windows. Admission is €3.50 (€2.50 for children, free with the Chorus Pass). Don't miss the third Sunday of July, when the Festa del Redentore - one of the biggest events on the city's calendar - sets up a wobbly pontoon bridge across the canal for pilgrims to walk from the Zattere to the church; on the eve, locals decorate their boats and head out to watch the massive fireworks display, which starts at about 10pm and lasts around an hour, and the Sunday itself is given over to regattas and the closing Mass.
For 500 years the Giardino del Convento della Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore - the Capuchin friary's garden, restored by the Venice Gardens Foundation - was off limits to all but its resident friars and their guests, until it opened to the public in 2024 (€12, reduced €6; open Thursday to Saturday, closing at 4.30pm in the low season but staying open until 7.30pm from June until mid-September). The entrance is through an unassuming door to the left of Palladio's church, leading through an olive grove and a simple cloister before popping out into a large, cypress-lined garden laid out in a cross, with pergolas draped in wisteria and grapevines and a central water basin filled with water lilies and lotuses. An orchard of plum, pear and pomegranate trees takes up one quadrant, with the rest planted with vegetables and medicinal herbs as it would have been at its peak; a larger olive grove with an apiary separates the main garden from the accommodation block. The brick wing at the far end is being restored, with plans to reinstate the meditation chapel and olive press and to add a cafe spilling out onto the smaller garden beyond, looking over the open lagoon.
Further along the Giudecca waterfront, the humble parish church of Sant'Eufemia (free, hours vary) is far older than Palladio's white-stone facades: founded in 890 and rebuilt in 1371, it retains its simple Veneto-Byzantine structure and internal columns, with a later rococo makeover leaving it a church of two halves. The artistic highlight is a vibrant 1480 painting by Bartolomeo Vivarini on the first altar to the right, showing a ringleted St Roch flashing his muscular, plague-scarred thigh to an angel. The 16th-century portico facing the canal was only grafted on in 1883, after the church it originally belonged to was demolished to make way for the Molino Stucky building - the distinctive neo-Gothic brick high-rise, now a Hilton hotel, that originally functioned as a flour mill and pasta factory. At the island's eastern end, the Casa dei Tre Oci (House of Three Eyes), a neo-Gothic house with three arched windows designed by photographer Mario de Maria in 1913, is now used by the Berggruen Institute for temporary exhibitions and residencies for philosophers. The stretch between the Redentore and Sant'Eufemia has excellent bars and restaurants with tables spilling onto the promenade to enjoy the glorious views, and one of the island's oldest trattorias, Trattoria Altanella, opened by fisherfolk in 1920, still serves delicious fare from a terrace overhanging a canal.
Faced with rising rents in central Venice, local artists and artisans gravitated to Giudecca's large abandoned spaces, and the Giudecca Art District was launched in 2019. One of the most fascinating spaces is the Artisti Artigiani del Chiostro, in the former Convent of St Cosmas and St Damian: a Benedictine convent founded in the 15th century, dissolved by Napoleon and used for a while as a barracks, converted into public housing in the 1990s, with the cells adjoining the cloister now repurposed as open studios where independent artisans ply their crafts and sell their wares. One of them is Stefano Morasso, who learned glassmaking in his father's studio on Murano and produces beautiful drinking glasses and jewellery; at neighbouring Cartavenezia, paper maestro Fernando Masone embosses and sculpts handmade cotton paper into lampshades and hand-bound sketchbooks, and also offers paper-making courses. Other cloister artisans produce Carnevale masks, metal ornaments, paintings and multimedia sculptures - and the Chiostro cats are reputedly the floofiest and smoochiest in Venice. Nearby, an old brick brewery has sprouted art spaces, including the Galleria Michela Rizzo, the most high-profile dealer gallery on the island (closed Sunday and Monday), which champions local artists and also hosts edgy exhibitions by the likes of Brian Eno, and Spazio Punch, an occasional venue for art, design and fashion events with usually something interesting on during the Biennale. Also worth checking out is CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo, a set of exhibition spaces and studios housed within a shipyard at the centre of the island.
Every Thursday morning Giudecca locals trundle along to stock up on organic vegetables at the Mercato della Prigione Femminile - the Women's Prison Market, run by the nonprofit cooperative Rio Terà dei Pensieri. Everything is grown behind high walls in the prison's 'Garden of Wonders', and if you're not looking to cook while you're here, there are also handmade soaps, shampoos and moisturisers to purchase, all made by prisoners as part of a social reintegration programme.
A near-continuous beach stretches along the seaward side of the Lido, the long sandbar that shields the lagoon from the Adriatic. Don't expect the picture-postcard clear water of the Italian south: despite its Blue Flag status (certifying safe swimming), the water here is shallow and murky, and while the commercial beaches are groomed in summer, at other times - and along the wilder stretches - a disconcerting amount of plastic waste is strewn along the high-tide mark. Even so, the Lido was the world's most exclusive seaside resort between 1857 and WWI, and that is what makes it so intriguing. Relics of the era include giant hotels in varying states of repair and the stabilimenti - privately managed stretches lined with wooden capanni (cabins), some rented by the same families every year or reserved for guests of seafront hotels, others available for walk-ins and online booking through veneziaspiagge.it; expect to pay up to €45 to rent an umbrella and loungers for two people, including showers and changing cabins. The high fences of the stabilimenti make it difficult to see the beach from the road, but there's nothing to stop you strolling along the sands in front of them. There are only a handful of free stretches where you can throw a towel down: the easiest to reach is the spiaggia comunale, accessed through the odd 1990s Blue Moon complex with its bars and restaurants at the opposite end of Granviale Santa Maria Elisabetta from the vaporetto wharf, while the best free areas are near the Spiaggia di San Nicolò at the north end of the island and the WWF Oasi Dune Alberoni at its southern tip, where the pine forest slopes down to the Lido's wildest beach, home to wildflowers, the fratino (Kentish plover) and sea turtles.
Even if you have no intention of swimming, the Lido makes for an interesting diversion on a hot day: join the locals slurping gelato and sipping prosecco beneath candy-striped awnings and ponder the peculiarities of 19th-century beach culture. The island's most prominent landmark is the Tempio Votivo, a tall domed structure built in the 1920s as a WWI memorial. The Grand Hotel des Bains, opened in 1900 but shuttered since 2016, was the setting for Thomas Mann's Death in Venice - the 1912 novella about a composer who becomes infatuated with an adolescent boy while staying there - and appeared in the film The English Patient; the story was loosely inspired by Mahler, and the obsession with the boy was at least partly autobiographical, according to Mann's wife. Luchino Visconti adapted the book into a 1972 film starring Dirk Bogarde, rated by the British Film Institute in 2016 as the 27th best LGBTIQ+ film of all time. Also worth a look: the Grande Albergo Ausonia & Hungaria, a 1907 stile liberty (Art Nouveau) hotel with garish tiles and wreath-bearing cherubs; the Hotel Excelsior (1908), a Veneto-Moorish fantasy palace designed by Giovanni Sardi with interiors by Fortuny, sitting directly on the beach; and Al Leone d'Oro, an exuberant Art Nouveau structure designed by Giovanni Sicher in the 1920s that comes alive during the film festival. And at the north end of the island, one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Europe: the Antico Cimitero Israelitico, granted to Venice's Jewish community in 1386, whose tombstones range from Venetian Gothic to Ottoman-inspired, some bearing the lion of Castile and León brought to Venice on the armorials of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. It fell into ruin after the end of the Republic but has been partly restored; it's protected by high walls, but you can get a reasonable view through the locked gate.
The only thing hotter than a Lido beach in August is the star-studded red carpet of the Venice International Film Festival, the Biennale's cinema component, held annually over 11 days from the last weekend in August and centred on the Palazzo del Cinema. It sits alongside Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance as one of the 'Big Five' film festivals, and Hollywood stars flock here for the whirlwind of premieres and parties; as well as the prestigious Leone d'Oro (Golden Lion) award, it's seen as an important launching pad for the Academy Awards - recent Best Picture winners such as Spotlight, The Shape of Water and Nomadland premiered here. Mere mortals can attend many of the screenings: get in quickly when tickets go on sale in August, and if you're a university student you can apply for official accreditation (€90). If you miss out, the red carpet can be seen from the street and is broadcast onto big outdoor screens. Venice was the world's first film festival - inaugurated in August 1932 on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior, years before Cannes kicked off in 1946. It was conceived by Count Giuseppe di Volpi, a fascist minister who cleverly fostered the Lido's upmarket tourism industry with an inspired run of modernising projects - the Schneider Trophy air race, the casino and an international motorboat race - all of which lured a new breed of moneyed American, English and French holidaymakers to the island. Such was the festival's success that within three years Eugenio Miozzi was commissioned to build the 'Palace of Cinema', and the festival transferred to its angular, Rationalist new home in 1938; the structure isn't to everyone's taste, but it is representative of the ambitious modernism of the 1930s.
Bicycles are banned in central Venice, which makes the Lido and Pellestrina the only options for a proper pedal. Logistics are easy: bikes can be rented from near the Lido vaporetto stop and taken on the Pellestrina ferry (with a vaporetto pass, you'll just need to pay €1.50 to transport your bike). Although it's flat, this is a decent ride of around 20km each way, so put aside at least half a day; if cycling isn't your thing, you can undertake a similar itinerary by bus. Head first to the beach, where the vast belle époque Grand Hotel des Bains has been boarded up since 2016, then continue along the waterfront road - sadly, high fences obstruct the sea views - past the Palazzo del Cinema and the Hotel Excelsior, until you reach the car-free cycle path atop the massive 18th-century sea walls known as the murazzi, which stretch much of the length of the Lido and Pellestrina and keep high seas from crashing into the lagoon. Pass over the Ponte di Borgo to explore the canals and lanes of Malamocco, as small and remote as it seems now, this historic settlement was the lagoon's capital from 742 to 811. Right at the southern tip of the island, the Alberoni pine forest slopes down to the Lido's wildest stretch of beach; a 160-hectare expanse of forest and dunes is protected as the WWF Oasi Dune Alberoni - park the bike and explore the shady walking tracks leading to the incongruously plastic-strewn beach. Backtrack to the ferry terminal (a six-minute ride) and cross to Pellestrina, where a bike path stretches along the lagoon side of the island, passing candy-striped houses, village churches, boatyards, abandoned industrial buildings and fishermen's shacks built over beds of mussels. San Pietro in Volta, five minutes along the path, is the first of four fishing villages strung along the water's edge; continue through Porto Secco and Sant'Antonio di Pellestrina, and time your ride to reach Da Celeste, a seafood restaurant on a lagoon-facing terrace, for lunch - the speciality is pasticcio di pesce, a baked seafood pasta with a cheesy top.
There's no need to leave lagoon cuisine behind when you leave Venice - learn some skills from the Acquolina Cooking School (classes €150–300) and take them home with you. The small-group classes, taught by chef Marika Contaldo Seguso - a scion of one of Murano's most famous glassblowing dynasties - are held in a quintessential Liberty-style Lido villa surrounded by gorgeous gardens. The full-day option starts at the Rialto Market with tips on how to identify and shop for speciality Venetian produce, followed by wine and cicheti at two historic bacari; you're then whisked by private boat along the Grand Canal to the villa for the lesson, where you learn to clean and prepare your market fish and vegetables and to cook a series of traditional Venetian dishes, which you then sit down to devour with fine wine at the end. If your travelling companions aren't interested in the lesson, they can just join you for the feast (€55); and if you're strapped for time or money, a half-day option skips the market and the boat ride, or you can opt for just a two-hour session.