Venice travel guide

Top 10 sights in Venice

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Nino Barbieri · CC BY-SA 2.5

   St Mark's Basilica

   Consecrated in 1094 on the plan of a lost church in Constantinople, and covered inside with eight thousand square metres of gold mosaic laid over four centuries. The bronze horses over the door were looted from the Hippodrome in 1204; those outside are copies and the originals are upstairs.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Doge's Palace

   The seat of the republic's government for five hundred years, Gothic and pink above an open arcade. Its Great Council chamber holds Tintoretto's Paradise, the largest canvas painting in the world, and a covered bridge leads from the magistrates' rooms straight into the prisons.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3© Matthias Süßen · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Piazza San Marco

   The only square in Venice called a piazza — every other open space is a campo. Napoleon is supposed to have called it the drawing room of Europe, and it is also the lowest ground in the city, so it floods first when the tide comes up.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© This Photo was taken by Wolfgang Moroder. Feel free to use my photos, but ple · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Santa Maria della Salute

   Longhena's octagonal church, begun in 1631 as the city's thanksgiving for the end of a plague that had killed something like a third of the population. Over a million timber piles were driven to carry it, and every 21 November a pontoon bridge is laid across the canal so Venetians can walk to it.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Gallerie dell'Accademia

   The collection of Venetian painting before the nineteenth century — Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione's Tempest, Titian, Veronese — in a former religious complex on the south bank of the Grand Canal. Leonardo's Vitruvian Man belongs to it but is too fragile to hang for more than a few weeks a decade.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6© Orlando Paride · CC BY-SA 4.0

   St Mark's Campanile

   The bell tower, ninety-nine metres high, which collapsed into a neat heap on 14 July 1902 without killing anyone except the caretaker's cat. The city resolved to rebuild it exactly as it was, where it was, and did so by 1912; a lift now goes up.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ca' d'Oro

   The finest Gothic palace facade on the Grand Canal, finished in 1428 and originally picked out in gold leaf, which is what the name refers to. It now holds the Franchetti collection, whose centrepiece is Mantegna's St Sebastian.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Cannaregio

   The northernmost of the six historic districts, and where a large share of the Venetians who remain actually live. It holds the Ghetto, the long straight fondamente along the canals dug to drain the marsh, and the bars that are still cheap.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

   The Franciscan church of San Polo, plain brick outside and enormous inside, holding Titian's Assumption over the high altar — painted in 1518 and shocking at the time for its motion — and the painter's own tomb, with Canova's marble pyramid opposite.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Il Redentore

    Palladio's votive church on the Giudecca, built between 1577 and 1592 after a plague that killed fifty thousand Venetians. Every July the city lays a bridge of boats across the canal to it and lets off fireworks over the lagoon, which is the best night of the Venetian year.

    TiqetsKlook

Popular tickets & tours in Venice

Live products and prices are provided directly by Klook.

Trending now

Based on 2025 Wikipedia pageviews — popular places beyond the top 10.

1. 

   1© San Marco Venice · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Venetian Ghetto

   The area to which the republic confined its Jews from 1516, and the origin of the word ghetto — from the copper foundry that had stood on the site. Since it could not spread outward it went upward, which is why the tallest tenements in Venice are here, with five synagogues hidden in their upper floors.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© Abxbay · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Peggy Guggenheim Collection

   The unfinished palace where Peggy Guggenheim lived from 1949 until 1979, with the collection she bought when almost nobody else was buying it: Pollock, whom she discovered, Ernst, whom she married, Picasso, Brancusi. Her fourteen dogs are buried in the garden beside her.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3

   Ospedale della Pietà

   A convent, orphanage and music school in Venice. It began as a charitable foundation set up in the fourteenth century by the sisters of Santa Maria dell'Umiltà for orphaned and abandoned girls; Vivaldi taught its orchestra for most of his career.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0

   St Mark's Clocktower

   An early Renaissance building at the northern side of St Mark's Square at the entrance to the Merceria. It consists of a tower holding the clock with lower wings on either side, attached to the eastern end of the Procuratie Vecchie.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ca' Rezzonico

   A palace on the Grand Canal fitted out as the museum of eighteenth-century Venice, with Tiepolo ceilings, Longhi's paintings of daily life and a reconstructed apothecary. Robert Browning died in it in 1889, in a room on the first floor.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6© kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Santi Giovanni e Paolo

   The Dominican church known in Venetian as San Zanipolo, and the pantheon of the republic: twenty-five doges are buried in it, their tombs climbing the walls in marble. It is the Gothic counterpart to the Frari across the city.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7

   Torcello Cathedral

   A basilica on the island of Torcello, among the oldest religious buildings in the Veneto. It is a clear survival of late early-Christian architecture and holds the earliest mosaics in the Venetian lagoon, including a Last Judgement covering the west wall.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

   San Zaccaria

   A fifteenth-century convent church a few steps behind the piazza, holding Giovanni Bellini's San Zaccaria altarpiece of 1505 in its original frame and position, which almost nothing else is. Eight early doges lie in the crypt, which is usually under water.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9

   Museo Correr

   A museum along the upper floor of the square, formed from Teodoro Correr's bequest of 1830 and covering the Venetian republic itself: doges' robes, coins, globes, and Canova's early work in the neoclassical rooms Napoleon's people built.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10© Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Madonna dell'Orto

    A church in the Cannaregio district of Venice and Tintoretto's own parish. Several of his works hang in it and he is buried there.

    TiqetsKlook