Murano's glass, Burano's colors and Torcello's silence: half of Venice's magic is a short boat ride away.
In a nutshell: the lagoon's classic day trip stitches four islands together - San Michele's cemetery, Murano's glass, Burano's rainbow houses and Torcello's ancient mosaics. Each is a short vaporetto ride away; see the minor islands for San Giorgio, San Lazzaro and the rest, and day trips for how to fit them into a day.
Venice is an archipelago, and the shallow lagoon that shelters it is the reason the city exists at all. This stretch of brackish water between the mainland and the Adriatic - roughly 212 square miles of it - blends fresh water and silt brought down by the rivers of the terraferma with the saltwater that the tides push in from the sea. Protected from wind and waves by the long sandbar of the Lido, it is so shallow that much of it could be crossed on foot, and for centuries those shifting sandbanks were the city's real defence: no enemy fleet could navigate them, which is why Venice is unique among the great medieval cities in having no walls at all.
Four islands just north of the city - San Michele, Murano, Burano and Torcello - stitch together into a classic day trip, an easy escape from the crowds. Each has a distinct identity: Murano makes glass, Burano produces lace beneath rainbow-coloured houses, Torcello keeps the lagoon's oldest church with its glowing mosaics, and San Michele, the island cemetery, comes first on the boat route out of Venice.
Every leg of the trip runs on the public vaporetti, and because a single ticket is valid for just 75 minutes, a travel pass is the sensible buy for the day; timetables are confirmed on the ACTV website. The circuit starts at Fondamente Nove, the stop on the city's northern shore - a pleasant 15- to 20-minute stroll from Rialto or St Mark's: from Campo Santa Maria Formosa follow the signs to SS Giovanni e Paolo, continue north along the Fondamenta dei Mendicanti beside the long straight canal, and turn left when you reach the open water. By boat, line 4.1 reaches the stop from San Zaccaria in about 35 minutes and line 4.2 from the station in about 30. In summer, express boats (line 7 from San Zaccaria, line 3 from the stations) run directly to Murano-Colonna, skipping the cemetery.
San Michele, whose Renaissance church stands under the patronage of the archangel Michael, has been Venice's cemetery since 1806, when Napoleon decided that burying the dead within the city was unhygienic; since then coffins have been ferried out across the water. The island is far less sombre than it sounds - a garden-like place of flowers, trees, birdsong and scurrying lizards. The graves are laid out in numbered sections known as recinti and further divided into fields for priests, nuns, monks, children, civilian victims of war, soldiers and sailors, with many headstones carrying a photograph of the deceased. The cemetery is open daily 7:30–18:00 (until 16:30 from October to March); the visitor reception sits to the left of the entrance, a free WC to the right, and picnicking is not allowed.
The foreign artists and romantics who adopted Venice as home rest in the two non-Catholic quarters: the Protestant (Evangelico) section, Recinto XV, and the Orthodox (Greco) section, Recinto XIV, both straight ahead from the entrance at the far end of the island. Here lie the poet Ezra Pound, the Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) - expelled from the Soviet Union, he chose Venice for his final resting place - and, in the Greek section, the composer Igor Stravinsky beside his wife and the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, whose canopied tomb is often piled with ballet slippers left by admirers. Keep an eye on the water, too: the blue funeral boat with its wheeled coffin rack is usually moored next to the vaporetto, and just offshore floats a sculpture of two figures in a boat - the poet Dante being ferried to the afterlife.
Murano's identity was fixed in 1292, when a Venetian law moved glassmaking and its dangerous furnaces out of the city - partly to protect the houses from fire, partly to guard the secrets of the craft. The earliest workshops produced mosaic tiles before branching out into the ornate vases, necklaces, sculptures and decanters that fill the shop windows today. From the Colonna stop, the Fondamenta dei Vetrai runs along the canal through the heart of the island; across the water, the Faro quarter bristles with glassworks and kilns - fabriche and fornaci in Italian - whose brick buildings give Murano a 19th-century, industrial feel. The shopfronts range from trinkets to high design: the refined Venini showroom at number 47 (closed Sunday) and, at number 37, the gallery of local master Cesare Toffolo with his delicately coloured vases and glasses. A word of caution - genuinely cheap glass is rarely genuine Murano glass, so if authenticity matters, ask. There is a small indoor mall with a supermarket at number 14 (closed Sunday), and down Calle dal Mistro a tiny gelateria serves unusual flavours such as seaweed alongside the classics.
The church of San Pietro Martire, free, holds one of the island's treasures: Giovanni Bellini's Virgin Enthroned with St Mark and a Kneeling Doge, a votive picture in which the doge - wrapped in an ermine cloak and ducal crown - is presented to the Virgin by the Evangelist, seeking divine protection for his reign. The sacristy museum (€3, closed Saturday and Sunday) displays 17th-century sacred vessels and ceremonial objects, each relic case paired with its certificate of authenticity from the Vatican. Further along, the Byzantine-Romanesque church of Santi Maria e Donato - Murano's cathedral and its architectural highlight - turns its famous apse stonework towards the canal; inside, the 12th-century interior preserves an inlaid stone floor and a lovely mosaic above the altar where the Virgin descends from heaven with open hands, blessing the congregation. At the base of the campanile, a memorial honours the war dead of the Veneto region.
The Glass Museum (Museo del Vetro), housed in a fine patrician palace on Fondamenta Giustinian, has been collecting the island's production since 1861 and remains the definitive place to follow the history of the craft and its techniques. Pride of place goes to the golden age of the 14th to 17th centuries, when Venetian masters first learned to make entirely transparent glass; in the central hall, look up at the chandeliers created for the 1867 Paris World's Fair - and don't miss the celebrated blue enamel Barovier wedding cup, one of the gems of the collection. Admission is €10 (covered by the Museum Pass), open daily 10:30–18:30 (until 16:30 from November to March), +39 041 739 586.For a live show, the Ai Dogi factory at number 25 on the Bressagio lets you watch a maestro at the open kiln on most weekday mornings (roughly 9:30–15:30, often with a lunch break and nothing on weekends or very hot days). At Mosaici Donà Murano on Fondamenta Daniele Manin, a fourth-generation workshop at number 86, sheets of coloured glass come out of the oven like pizzas and are cut into the tesserae that adorn churches all over Venice; bags of mixed pieces make a light, affordable souvenir.
Burano is village Venice: some 2,700 people, a sleepy community, and every house painted its own shade, so the streets read like a box of crayons. The colours were practical as well as pretty - the Bora wind, which keeps the mosquitoes and malaria away, also brings fog, and the vivid facades helped returning fishermen find their way home through the mist. The island's name probably derives from Porta Boreana, the gate of the settlers' hometown that faced that same wind. Beyond the touristy main drag, back lanes and Technicolor canals keep the peace, laundry hangs across the alleyways, and the bell tower of San Martino leans at a jaunty five degrees, a tilt that matches Pisa's. The main square, Piazza Galuppi, named for the 18th-century composer born here, is packed with lace shops and cafés - and the bakers still sell the island's famous buranei biscuits. Lace is cheaper here than in Venice, so serious shoppers should compare prices in the city first.
Burano's Lace Museum (Museo del Merletto) tells the island's story in a small, modern exhibit: a 20-minute film on the ground floor recounts how lace patterns were inspired by the ornate Gothic facades of Venice, where the craft was claimed to have been invented or at least perfected, while upstairs antique pieces slide out of drawers alongside living lacemakers working at the windows. Admission €5 (covered by the Museum Pass), Tuesday to Sunday 10:00–16:00, closed Mondays, +39 041 730 034.The private collection at Merletti d'Arte dalla Lidia, in a shop on Via Baldassarre Galuppi 215, is a museum in miniature - bring the magnifying glass provided and study lace masterpieces from all over Europe. The church of San Martino Vescovo (free, usually closed 12:00–15:00) holds a restored Tiepolo Crucifixion near the back of the left wall, and a stroll around behind the tower reveals its true tilt; the grassy area at the far end of the island makes a lovely picnic spot, as does the park beside the dock. For a proper meal, the family-run Trattoria al Gatto Nero da Ruggero on Fondamenta de la Giudecca 88 has served traditional dishes for three generations (Tuesday–Saturday 12:30–15:00 and 18:00–21:00, lunch only on Sundays, closed Mondays, reservations advised).
Torcello is where Venice began: Romanised farmers fleeing the Germanic tribes that overran the mainland in the fifth century settled here, and by the 11th century the tiny island supported eleven churches. But the farming was poor, there was no fresh water, and mosquitoes brought malaria; the lagoon silted up despite the diversion of the mainland rivers, and the island was slowly abandoned. Today barely a handful of people live here, and it is the most natural, least developed island of the lagoon - marshy, shrub-covered and wonderfully quiet. From the dock, a ten-minute walk in the full sun crosses the parapet-less Ponte del Diavolo and passes the five-room Locanda Cipriani hotel, which has hosted Thomas Mann, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana, before reaching the church complex: the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, the oldest church in the lagoon (founded in 639, rebuilt in 1008), its bell tower, a small museum in two buildings with modest finds including sixth-century mosaic fragments, and the free church of Santa Fosca. On the grassy space in front, around the stone seat known as Attila's Throne - where local tribunes are said to have dispensed justice - stand the ruins of a ninth-century baptistery, and behind the cathedral the little chapel of San Marco marks the spot where tradition says the Evangelist's body rested on its journey from the Holy Land.
The cathedral's fame rests on its Venetian-Byzantine mosaics. In the apse, Mary with the Christ Child is flanked below by the twelve apostles, her three stars symbolising her perpetual virginity; in the right apse, Christ Pantocrator stands between the archangels Michael and Gabriel beneath a sumptuous vault, while the ceiling shows the sacrificial lamb. But the masterpiece is the Last Judgment covering the back wall in six horizontal bands: the Crucifixion; Christ striding out of Limbo with the aged Adam and Eve behind him, one foot on a devil; the Creator within an almond-shaped mandorla, a river of fire pouring from its base into hell; angels preparing the empty throne of judgment with its book of seven seals; and the archangel Michael weighing souls while devils try to tip the scales. On the right burn the fires of hell, where the seven deadly sins are punished in gruesome detail - pride with crowned heads in flames, lust, gluttony, envy with worms eating the eyes from skulls, anger cooling in waist-deep water, greed and laziness. The brick walls and wooden ceiling beams are the classic flexible materials of Venetian building, able to shift with the sands beneath; the altar enshrines the relics of St Heliodorus, a local bishop who travelled to the Holy Land with St Jerome, and the columns of the rood screen were clearly scavenged from older buildings, to judge by the variety of their capitals.
Almost every shop along Murano's central canals displays glassy treasures, ranging from the sublime to the completely ridiculous - clowns in cars, parrots in trees - and you will quickly see both extremes on the main strip of showrooms on the Fondamenta dei Vetrai. Sales staff will let you handle pieces if you ask, but wield parcels and handbags with care: what you break, you buy. There are lots of foreign-made imposters on sale as well; as a rule of thumb, if it is not eye-wateringly expensive, it is probably not made on Murano - expect to pay upwards of €35 for a single handblown tumbler. Officially certified artisans are listed on muranoglass.com and display 'Vetro Artistico Murano' labels. Some furnaces offer glassblowing demonstrations, though a few exist mainly to cater to tour groups. One certified traditional furnace worth seeking out is Wave Murano Glass, where you can watch the blowers from the factory entrance for free, join an in-depth 45-minute tour (€25), try blowing your own piece (€85) or take a two-hour beginners' course (€225). The Glass Cathedral (€10, €6 for children) puts on a good 25-minute show under a mirror ball within the shell of an old church - there is even a bar - while Guarnieri Vetreria Artistica charges €5 for demonstrations that are half as long. Note that some places offer 'free' demonstrations but may ask for 'donations' for the workers or push hard in the attached shop.
A pleasant two-hour stroll along Murano's main canals takes in the landmarks and the best window shopping. The vaporetto docks at the Faro stop near a little lighthouse built in 1934; walking along tree-lined Calle Bressagio you pass a small disused chapel with angels atop it before reaching the Rio dei Vetrai, the island's main showroom strip. Pause at the window of Venini, a pioneer of modern art glass that has collaborated with design greats such as Carlo Scarpa, Tadao Ando and Gae Aulenti. Towards the end of the canal is the 16th-century church of San Pietro Martire: pop inside for the art, including Tintoretto's Baptism of Christ, and if you have time visit the parish museum (€3) to study the carved characters in the sacristy's 17th-century wooden panelling - including Nero with his fiddle and a suitably macabre Prometheus. Cross the main canal and follow the waterline past the Glass Museum to Campo San Donato with its WWI memorial, campanile and basilica.
The Museo del Vetro tells the entire backstory of glassmaking - a skill that likely started as a happy accident around a beach bonfire somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. The museum occupies the Palazzo Giustinian, which was the home of the bishops of Torcello from 1659 until the diocese's dissolution in 1805. The main displays spread over eight rooms on the first floor: start in the Origins room, where backlit cabinets display precious ancient Syrian, Greek and Roman glassware, the oldest dating back to the 5th century BCE, then move to the Salone Maggiore, where three enormous chandeliers appear to float beneath the frescoed ceiling in a room showcasing the golden age of Murano glassmaking. Themed rooms diverge into etching, mirrors, over-the-top table pieces and imitation porcelain made from opaque glass, and one room is devoted to colourful Venetian beads, which were traded worldwide and netted huge profits. Allow about an hour. Admission is included on the Museum Pass (€40, covering all of Venice's civic museums), or buy a combined ticket with Burano's Lace Museum (€12).
Built in the 12th century and still looking much as it did then, Murano's basilica of Santi Maria e Donato - the island's cathedral - is one of the oldest churches in the lagoon, and its marble 'carpet' and dazzling golden apse mosaic place it alongside San Marco and Torcello in an exclusive club of beautiful Byzantine-influenced basilicas. Unusually, its rear is more richly decorated than its facade: the church follows the ancient Christian tradition of orienting towards the rising sun, leaving its eastern end facing the canal, and in Venice it is always the canal aspect that matters most. A sweet-faced Byzantine Madonna greets you from the golden mosaic above the altar, robed in the deepest shade of blue with palms raised in prayer, while the entire floor swirls with an intricate mosaic of multicoloured marbles and stones such as porphyry and serpentine - geometric shapes around mosaic peacocks, birds of prey, gryphons and what appears to be a loved-up pair of crickets sheltering beneath a flower; an information panel helps decode the symbolism. Admission is €3.50 (€1.50 for children) and the church is not covered by the Chorus Pass; there is no charge to enter for services, and tourist visits on Sundays don't begin until after the 11am Mass.
After you have snapped a trillion photos of the multihued houses along Burano's outer canals, you will inevitably find yourself on Piazza Baldassare Galuppi, the island's substantial central square, its large paved expanse interrupted only by a flagpole, an oversized wellhead and a statue of its namesake. Galuppi was born in Burano in 1706 and was one of the most successful composers of the 18th century, though he has been largely forgotten since. The 16th-century church of San Martino Vescovo takes up the entire southern flank of the piazza; call inside to see Giambattista Tiepolo's 1725 La Crocifissione, near the rear on the left, showing the Madonna collapsed at the foot of the Cross, grey with grief. Near the main altar, the 19th-century Russian icon of the Madonna di Kazan is a masterpiece of enamelwork with astonishingly bright, lifelike eyes. Neighbouring St Barbara's Chapel (accessed from the square) contains relics of the saint and an amusing mosaic of her holding the Empire State Building instead of her usual tower.
The Museo del Merletto - the Lace Museum - occupies the old Burano Lace School, which operated right up until 1970, and does a fine job of showcasing the sophistication the craft achieved before machines took over. Downstairs, videos detail the origins of lacemaking, its heyday under the Republic and the artistry required to produce even a small piece of Burano needle stitch; upstairs there are pattern books, samples, portraits showing lacy outfits and some lace ensembles from the early 20th century, including a 1930s wedding dress. An hour is plenty to look around; admission is included on the Museum Pass, and the museum is closed on Mondays. While most of the lace sold on the island these days is imported and machine made, the real deal can be purchased from a handful of exclusive boutiques - and it is not cheap. Emilia Burano sells the wares of a fourth-generation family of lacemakers from its flagship store just around the corner from the museum (upstairs there are displays from the family's collection, and if you are lucky you may see the matriarch stitching away); other stores include Martina Vidal and Dalla Lidia.
All of Torcello's main sights cluster in the shadow of the hulking brick basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, which you watch loom into view on the 10-minute stroll along the canal from the vaporetto stop. The ticket office is through the arch to the side of the basilica; the oldest parts of the building date from 639, making it by far the oldest church in the lagoon, and its restrained brick exterior betrays no hint of the colourful scene within - astonishing mosaics glitter from the front and back walls while the entire floor swirls with geometric mosaics formed from precious marbles sourced from all over the world. Pick up the complimentary audio guide from the booth at the rear before you get too overwhelmed. A combo ticket is the best buy: €12 covers church, campanile and museum, or €10 for just the basilica and museum. Head around the back of the basilica to reach its 11th-century campanile (€5 on its own), which at 55m is the most prominent landmark of the northern lagoon - there is no lift, but the climb rewards you with a view over the swampy islands that gives a fascinating insight into how Venice itself must once have looked. Opening hours are sporadic at the free church of Santa Fosca, a round 11th-century building with plain brick walls, a domed wooden roof and Corinthian columns in grey marble; the remains of the 3rd-century child martyr St Fosca and her nurse, St Maura, are displayed beneath the altar. The Museo di Torcello (€3, €1.50 for children) occupies two buildings across the square: the 13th-century Palazzo del Consiglio gathers remnants from Torcello's missing churches, while the more interesting annexe above the neighbouring building houses ancient Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman finds. In front of the museum, the 5th-century marble Trono d'Attila was long said to have been used by Attila the Hun when his horde swept through the mainland - in fact the Huns never reached Torcello, and the throne was probably the seat of a magistrate dispensing justice. Note that the museum is closed on Mondays, and that the famous Locanda Cipriani inn, where Ernest Hemingway once stayed, was closed for an extended refurbishment at the time of writing.
Before Napoleon turned it into a cemetery in 1807, San Michele had been home to a community of Camaldolese monks for 700 years, and you can still wander through their cloister. Their church, the Chiesa di San Michele in Isola, was completed in 1478 - the first Renaissance-style church to be built in Venice - and inside there are impressive carved wooden ceiling bosses, though the architecture is best admired from the vaporetto to Murano. Beyond the famous graves, a striking set of contemporary concrete-and-basalt burial courtyards designed by David Chipperfield provides a modern counterpoint. Photography and picnics are forbidden on the island. The Cimitero stop is only nine minutes from Fondamente Nove's pier C and three minutes from Murano Colonna's pier A.
When Venetians want time out from tourists, the agricultural island of Sant'Erasmo is one of the places they escape to. One of the largest of the lagoon islands but with fewer than 750 residents, it is 4.5km from tip to toe - as long as Venice itself, though only 1km wide at its broadest - and is known as the orto di Venezia, the garden of Venice: along with neighbouring Le Vignole, it is a major supplier of fresh vegetables for both the Rialto Market and the city's top restaurants. Asparagus, squash and tomatoes are grown here, but the island is particularly famous for its purple-hued artichokes (carciofi violetti), which have a restricted designation of origin - they can only be grown on Sant'Erasmo, Le Vignole, Mazzorbo and Lio Piccolo, with no chemicals used in their production. The first flower, the castraura, is the tastiest and is only available for 15 days in mid-April, traditionally eaten raw; subsequent flowers are woodier and only the heart is eaten, in a season of just 15 days. The island is lovely for a stroll or bike ride at any time of year: vaporetto line 13 heads from Fondamente Nove D and Murano Faro to Sant'Erasmo every hour, and it is a 20-minute walk from the first of three stops, Capannone, to the narrow beach where locals moor their boats and swim up to the Al Bacan cafe. Along the way you pass the island's only hotel, Il Lato Azzurro, which usually has bikes for rent (€10 for two hours). The nearby Torre Massimiliana, a squat circular fort built by the Austrians in the 19th century, opens sporadically for art exhibitions and festivals; if you are visiting on the second Sunday of May, don't miss the Festa del Carciofo Violetto, when Venetians pack the vaporetti and head to the tower's grounds for a celebration of all things artichoke, including artichoke beer.
Immediately west of Sant'Erasmo, the Isola del Lazzaretto Nuovo became Venice's second isolation island in 1468. While the 'old' Lazzaretto, just off the Lido, took people already sick with bubonic plague, the new Lazzaretto isolated travellers arriving from ports with suspected outbreaks for quaranta (40) days - and it was from here that the word 'quarantine' entered the global lexicon. Visits require forward planning, as access is only possible on a guided tour (€10): scheduled English-language group tours run on Saturday mornings from mid-April to mid-October, excluding August, when only exclusive tours (€150 for up to 15 people) are offered. To secure a place, email [email protected] by the Thursday prior; you then take the line 13 vaporetto from Fondamente Nove D at 10.25am for the 11am start - Lazzaretto Nuovo is an on-request stop, so tell the vaporetto staff where you are going and remind them again as you leave Le Vignole. The two-hour tour explores the surviving wells, gunpowder towers and a belvedere overlooking the lagoon, plus a 1km nature trail through the barene (sandbanks). Museum displays are housed in the Tezon Grande, a vast brick warehouse where incoming goods were once smoked and disinfected with vinegar; at over 100m in length it is the largest historic building in Venice outside the Arsenale, and remnants of centuries-old signatures and graffiti of ships are still visible on its walls.
The Isola della Certosa is only a three-minute vaporetto ride from densely packed Castello, but the contrast could not be more pronounced: past the boatyard and shuttered hotel lies a pleasant expanse of wooded parkland where locals come to jog, picnic and give their dogs the rare treat of grass beneath their paws. To the right of the path from the wharf stands the ruined base of a cloister, all that is left of a grand 15th-century Carthusian monastery that stood here until Napoleon expelled the monks; the Austrians later used the island as a military base and sold off the entire cloister to Prince Charles of Prussia, who rebuilt it in his summer castle in Berlin in 1850. Today, thanks to EU funding and a public-private partnership, the island has been revived as a marina and public park under the Vento di Venezia umbrella, with a restaurant near the vaporetto stop and an alfresco bar at the far end of the marina. A reforesting campaign under the banner of Bosco del Cinema (Film Forest) dedicates a tree to each winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice International Film Festival. Vaporetto lines 4.1/4.2 stop on request at Certosa between 7am and 8.30pm, with 5.1/5.2 taking over after that; to be picked up, push the signal button at the wharf. Just across the canal, Le Vignole - two main islands connected by a bridge, once producers of the doge's wine - is mostly fields, orchards and vineyards, and its 50-odd inhabitants still mainly make a living from agriculture. There is little to do there except a five-minute stroll along the canal, but at its southeastern tip a promontory ends in the 16th-century Forte Sant'Andrea, the best-preserved fort in the lagoon, which you will need a boat to reach.
| Island | Star attraction | Cost | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Michele | Garden cemetery with the graves of Pound, Stravinsky and Diaghilev | Free | Daily 7:30–18:00 (until 16:30 Oct–Mar) |
| Murano | Glass Museum, live furnace demos, Bellini's altarpiece | €10 (covered by the Museum Pass) | Daily 10:30–18:30 (until 16:30 Nov–Mar) |
| Burano | Painted houses, Lace Museum, leaning tower | €5 (covered by the Museum Pass) | Tue–Sun 10:00–16:00, closed Mon |
| Torcello | Santa Maria Assunta's Byzantine mosaics | Church €6, museum €4 | Daily 10:30–17:30 (10:00–17:00 Nov–Feb), museum closed Mon |