Venice

For close to a thousand years it was the doge's private chapel, and only in 1807 did it become the city's cathedral. Walls and vaults are covered in gold glass mosaic. Time your visit to when the lights go on. The floor rolls in waves with the ground beneath.

The Bridge of Sighs can be crossed from the inside. The canal seen through its stone lattice was a prisoner's last sight of the outside. The doges hang in a row along the wall; one place alone is black cloth, for the man executed for treason.

For centuries it was the sole crossing of the Grand Canal, and its three lanes still divide the walkers going over. The fish market on the north side shuts Sunday and Monday and packs up by the end of the morning, so come late and you get the hosing down.

Unlike the campanile on the main square there is hardly a queue, and a lift takes you up. From here the whole of St Mark's lies across the water, the picture you cannot get from the tower standing in it. The boat is one stop.

Guggenheim's own unfinished palazzo is the museum, which is why the rooms are small and the ceilings low. Her grave lies in the garden beside those of her dogs, and the rider on the canal terrace shows from passing boats.

Every house is a different colour, and changing yours means applying to the council for permission. The story goes that fishermen painted them to pick out their own door in fog, and the island did live off lace for a long time. The boat takes forty minutes.

Fire is why the furnaces were pushed off the main islands, and afterwards the glassmakers were forbidden to leave as well. Demonstrations still run in front of the furnaces, though a free boat ride out tends to end at a shop door.

Pick up one of the hand mirrors left at the door. Tintoretto worked this one building for over twenty years until walls and ceilings were full, and craning upward wrecks your neck fast. It is quiet enough to sit and look a long while.

Only four bridges span the Grand Canal, so gondola ferries fill the gaps between them. The fare is nothing beside a tourist gondola and the crossing takes minutes; people who live here ride it standing. Landings are few, so mark them on a map first.

The word ghetto came from this spot, where it first meant the foundry that stood here. Barred from spreading outward, the quarter grew upward, which is why the buildings are tall and the storeys low. A relief on the wall of the square records the deportations.

Venetian painting from Bellini through Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. Giorgione's Tempest and Veronese's Feast in the House of Levi, which fills an entire wall, are the headliners. Leonardo's Vitruvian Man stays in storage and is almost never shown.

An octagonal domed church vowed in the plague of 1630, guarding the opening of the Grand Canal. Every 21 November a pontoon bridge is laid across the canal and Venetians walk over to give thanks. The sacristy holds paintings by Titian and Tintoretto.

A great brick Gothic church, where Titian's Assumption spreads its red robes behind the high altar. Titian himself is buried here. The pyramid tomb on the left wall is Canova's, with carved mourners filing into its half-open door.

A secondhand bookshop that keeps its stock in bathtubs and a gondola against flood days. In the courtyard, waterlogged books are stacked into a staircase you climb for a canal view. Cats wander the shelves, and the narrow aisles jam quickly with photographers.

A near-empty island beside Burano, settled before Venice itself. Inside the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, a Last Judgment mosaic covers the whole end wall. A canal there is crossed by the Devil's Bridge, which has no parapets.

The long sand bar dividing the lagoon from the sea, with beach running all down its seaward side. Unusually for Venice, cars and buses run here. From late August into early September the film festival rolls out its red carpet here.

A long quayside walk facing south along the Giudecca Canal, sunny even in winter, so Venetians come out to sit in it. The Redentore church stands across the water. It was the cruise ship channel, which is why it runs so wide.

It collapsed entirely in 1902 and was rebuilt where it was, as it was, reopening in 1912. A lift goes to the top, so there are no stairs. When the bells strike the hour up there it is deafening, so time your visit around them.

An open spiral staircase on a tight courtyard; bovolo is Venetian for snail shell. Wind up through the arched galleries and the top shows St Mark's domes over the rooftops. Tucked down an alley, it gets few visitors.

The state shipyard where the Venetian Republic turned out its galleys. One of the lions at the main gate was carried off from Piraeus, near Athens, and has Norse runes carved into its flank. During the Biennale the old ropeworks becomes exhibition space.

Giovanni Bellini's altarpiece hangs on the left side of the nave. The crypt, through a small paid entry, always has seawater pooled on its floor, with the columns mirrored in it. A few minutes from St Mark's Square, and never crowded.

The name means phoenix: it burned in 1836 and again in 1996, and was rebuilt both times. Today's gilded auditorium is the 2003 reconstruction of the old one. By day, when nothing is on, an audio guide takes you round the stalls and the royal box.

A small yard that builds and repairs gondolas, its wooden buildings looking like an Alpine chalet beside the canal. You cannot go in; from the quay across the water you watch upturned gondolas being worked on.

The whole island between the city and Murano is a cemetery, its red brick wall topped with cypresses. Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Brodsky are buried here. Water buses to Murano stop at its landing, so hop off on the way.

A chapel in Padua, 30 minutes away by train, whose walls and vault Giotto frescoed around 1305. You go in by reserved time slot, a small group at a time: 15 minutes waiting in a humidity-control room first, then 15 minutes inside.