Venice

Venice is built on water, on wooden piles driven into a lagoon, and nothing moves through it but boats and people on foot. The Grand Canal curves across the city between marble palaces, crossed at its middle by the Rialto Bridge and the shops that line its single arch. It opens onto St Mark's Square, where St Mark's Basilica glitters with gold mosaics and the painted halls of Doge's Palace show how a republic once ruled the sea. Teatro La Fenice burned down twice and was rebuilt twice, all red velvet and gilding. At the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Bellini, Carpaccio and Titian tell the city through its own painters. Out in the lagoon, Burano paints its houses in flat bright colours along the canals, and Murano has been blowing glass for seven hundred years. In the evening people stand at the counter with a glass of wine and cicchetti, the small Venetian bites that go with it.