Private Venice in a day:
Mosaics, intrigue, and a gondola through the canals
Destination
Venice, Italy
Duration
6.5 hours
Tour size
Max 8
Language
English
Overview
Venice has 400 bridges, 150 canals, and over a thousand years of history built on top of itself. This private Venice in a day tour puts a local guide at your side and pre-reserved tickets in your hand, so you see the highlights without retracing your steps.
- •Stand beneath 86,000 square feet of gold mosaics inside St. Mark's Basilica, with pre-reserved access
- •Cross the Bridge of Sighs inside the Doge's Palace, where Casanova was once imprisoned
- •Drift through Venice's quieter canals on a 30-minute private gondola ride
- •Trace the Rialto neighborhood's trading history from its medieval fish market to Marco Polo's house
- •Hear the stories a local guide tells differently when it's just your group listening
What's included
- Skip-the-line access to St. Mark's Basilica
- Pre-reserved ticket to the Doge's Palace
- 30-minute gondola ride
- Local English-speaking guide
You will visit
- Rialto Bridge
- Rialto Fish Market (closed on Mondays)
- Fondaco dei Tedeschi (from outside)
- House of Marco Polo (from outside)
- Church of Miracles (from outside)
- Campo San Giovanni e Paolo
- Scuola Grande di San Marco (from outside)
- Colleoni equestrian monument by Verrocchio
- Campo Santa Maria Formosa
- Arch of Paradise
- Church of San Zulian (from outside)
- St. Mark's Basilica
- St. Mark's Square
- Doge's Palace
- Bridge of Sighs
- New Prisons
- Gondola ride
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What to expect
The Rialto neighborhood, where Venice's mercantile story begins
Your tour starts at the Church of San Giacometto in the Rialto, one of Venice's oldest buildings. From here you'll walk through the morning market stalls and past the Rialto Fish Market, where vendors have traded since 1097. Your guide will point out the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, once the city's German trading post, and the house where Marco Polo is said to have lived. These are the streets where Venice built its fortune, and vendors still haul crates of fish off boats at dawn.
Cannaregio and Castello, where the city still belongs to Venetians
From the Rialto, you'll walk into Cannaregio and Castello, two of Venice's six sestieri. You'll pass the Church of Miracles, a Renaissance chapel faced entirely in colored marble, and arrive in Campo San Giovanni e Paolo, where twenty-five doges are buried. Your guide will stop at the Scuola Grande di San Marco and the Colleoni monument, a bronze equestrian statue by Verrocchio that Venetians considered so lifelike they believed it could move. You'll hear Venetian dialect from open windows here, and walk streets narrow enough that neighbors could shake hands across them.
"People always ask about Casanova. I tell them he escaped through the roof in the rain, wearing a silk hat."
Giuliano,
WalksDevour guide
"I've crossed the Rialto Bridge thousands of times, and I still stop and stare when the light hits the Grand Canal in the morning."
Roberta,
WalksDevour guide
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Frequently asked questions
Our guides love answering your questions. Here are some things they'd like you to know before you arrive.
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