Just 1 or 2 or 3 days in Venice? Here are free self guided itineraries
 

Many people post for the first time on Fodor's because they are going to Venice for only a few days, and are uncertain about what to see and how to organize their time. If you want to a standard, efficient itinerary for seeing sights, here are links to that information:

Perfect itineraries for One, Two, or Three days in Venice ( Reids Italy)
http://www.reidsitaly.com/destinatio...nice_itin.html

One Day in Venice, the Pocket Guide from Hostelworld.com
http://www.hostelworld.com/pdf-guides/venice

Two Days in Venice from Why Go Italy
http://www.italylogue.com/planning-a...in-venice.html

One Day in Venice from Vacation Idea
http://www.vacationidea.com/venice/1_day_venice.html

Spend a Weekend in Venice from E-how
http://www.ehow.com/how_2086260_spen...nd-venice.html

Three Days in Venice from Lonely Planet
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travelbl...?destId=360029

There is lots of such information on line. Just google the number of days you will be in Venice (or Rome or Florence).

ttt

Not wanting to bore anybody by posting my two cents on those (both valuable and dangerous) standard itineraries multiple times, I just link to what I wrote on the twin "Rome itineraries" thread:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...omment-6582742, and add which Venice sights I'm shocked at not finding in ANY of these itineraries: SS. Redentore, at least one out of the "small Romanesque trinity" S. Nicolò dei Mendicoli - S. Simon Grando - S. Zuane Degolà (no typos here, this is Venetian not Italian!), Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, S. Maria dei Miracoli, Fondazione Cini (ex-monastery of S. Giorgio), Scuola Grande di S. Marco (not related to anything else called "S. Marco"!), S. Maria della Salute, S. Sebastiano: these, along with the ubiquitous Piazza & Basilica di S. Marco and Canal Grande, and - mentioned at least on some itineraries - Scuola Grande di S. Rocco and S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari are the best Venetian sights IMO, and I wouldn't even dream of seeing Murano (!!), Burano or St. Mark's Campanile (or even the Guggenheim!) before having seen ALL of them. Of course, this is just my taste, and to each his own; but it's amazing how all standard itineraries (not just the ones posted here!) seem to be driven by the same taste - or by simple copying instead of any taste at all?

There are so many layers. The Scuolae (sp?) are magnificent. DH and I had to return 2 more times to even put a dent in the places Zep and franco have noted.

Oh, but everything you list is the bits you come across just wandering aimlessly! ;-)

The question of wandering in Venice is interesting, btw, and here is perhaps the right place to discuss it. Two remarks (I'll try to keep it short):
1. For anybody eager to wander "aimfully", Paolo Giordani's "Venice. Thirty Walks to Explore the City" is a GREAT book. Not only is Giordani going to guide you into hidden courts and lanes that you'd never find on your own; he's also making the wandering an in-depth exploration of the city's rich history, above all: of the history of every-day life. He tells about former businesses, workshops, pubs that used to be in this very lane back in the 15th or 16th or 18th century; he makes you discover inscriptions, reliefs, sculptures and tells their story... this is how wandering about really makes sense.
2. Even aimless wandering can make sense, though, and the famous (and inevitable) "getting lost" - you just need TWO informations to make sense of it: the layout of Venice is that of an oriental city (of an Arabic city, more precisely). All those dead ends, hidden passages, courts - that's a classic medina, which shows how deeply connected Venice was to the Orient, and how poorly to Italy - cf. "Italy's big three"! Italy's? Venice has much more in common with Istanbul, for example, than with Rome. And this Arabic layout was at the same time very useful to deter strangers... there were always, from the city's earliest times, MANY strangers there - merchants, sailors. But it's obvious that Venice wanted to control them, not least by preventing them from really venturing into town. There were no city maps in the 13th century, and no street lighting. So it was hardly possible for a stranger to go into town - they had to remain on the quays, more or less. So the famous experience of getting lost becomes quite meaningful if you figure to be a 13th century sailor.

@franco: Your response is priceless. Before I visited Venice for the first time, I read as much as I could about its history and when I was there, it felt as if I've been there before. I only had to look for the places included in the list I've made after reading so many books and after 10 years or so, I am still at it. Thanks for your post.

Has anybody ever improved on John Ruskin's guide to Venice?

I suppose were I to look for a comprehensive guide, I would want a significant section on music, and on craft, and something too on appreciating the nature of Venice as a maritime republic.

But if you are going to wander, why not wander around with Ruskin? Or if that's too heavy, how about this:

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?...dition_id=3606

Ruskin is good - "The Stones of Venice".

I also like JG Links - Venice for Pleasure. Interestingly, Links' wife wrote a biography of Ruskin. JG himself was a Ruskin enthusiast. Many don't like Ruskin's "romantic decay" approach to Venice, which is somewhat mid-Victoian, a JMW Turner view of Venice.

I think that the comprehensive guide that Zepp would like is still to be written.

Rick Steves is not particularly good (I impart this knowledge as a favour to future visitors). And I think that Zepp has done a favour to many by compiling these short itineraries for Venice, Rome and Florence. They answer a frequent question - we have x days in V / R / F, what should we do.

Ruskin runs to half a million words, which was fine when "carry on bag" meant a Louis Vuitton trunk marked "wanted on voyage", and hauled by stout porters. But the three volume work is a bit heavy now that "carry on" means an eight kilo limit. Quill's book looks good.

I think the serious traveler to Italy packs the books first, the sketchbook and diary (or laptop second) and the clothes last -- and if something doesn't fit, the clothes get left behind.

Well, the serious traveller might want to take this then (a reprint of Coryat's 1610 guide):

CORYAT, Thomas.
Coryat's Crudities: Hostily gobled up in five Moneths travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia commonly called the Grisons Country, Helvetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany and the Netherlands;
1905 Newly digested in the Langry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, and now dispersed to the nourishment of the travelling Members of this Kingdome.

2 vols. Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905. Royal 8vo. Orig. cloth. Gilt. Top edge gilt other edges uncut. With 10 plates/text-illusts, some of which are folded. Title-pages printed in red/black. Uncut & partly unopened. Lim. edition. Fine.

bookmarking

Ruskin improved, probably not. But complemented. It's all worse, thus. Ideally, you'd have to wander about with Ruskin's three volumes AND with Giordani's tome. Giordani tells nothing about art, and almost nothing about architecture. His beef is local history, nothing else. He explains the names of almost all lanes all over Venice, he tells the - both official and trivial - stories of the families who once constituted the core of the Venetian Republic's society, he shows where they owned houses, he tells what has been handed down about merchants, artisans, both single shops or families and guilds (and their scuole - there were dozens of them!)... a mixture of history of everyday life, official history and trivia; the sum of the memory of the city's inhabitants, quite fascinating.
Just one example: when coming to Calle Lunga S. Maria Formosa (one of the arteries of everyday - Venetian - life in the neighbourhood), he mentions that in the late 18th century, a noble called Almorò Morosini was assailed in this lane by four masked bravos during a bull-baiting (then extremely popular in Venice!) that took place on Campo S. Maria Formosa. He managed to defend himself, though alone, against the four men until his servants came to his aid, and with his swordcane even killed a bloodhound that the assassins had sicced on him. This resulted in a saying that remained popular in the neighbourhood for a long time, indicating an insuperable difficulty: "gnanca el stocco del Morosin che à tagià el can per mezo" - not even (with) Morosini's cane that cut the dog in twain.
Those stories may be insignificant taken by themselves, but in their entirety, they're picturing a very strange and different Venice - bull-baiting, contract killers, streetfighting, swordcanes, not exactly what you'd associate with modern Venice. But that was just 250 years ago, and there hasn't been that much "official" history going on in Venice since that time...

Although Venice was the best at keeping us lost, just about every other hill town in Italy and France tried really hard to do the same! LOL

DH and I often remarked (and correctly per franco above) that it was that city's way of keeping the visitor unbalanced. If you know where to go, why do you need signposts!

This thread also reveals the differences in what people are interested and how deeply they wish to delve into any area. It behooves us Fodorite posters to read carefully the questions of posters and to offer our own opinions judiciously.

bookmarking

yes, yes, yes, to the realization that the reason why Venice has become a place to simply "wander" is precisely because it is the ONLY city in Europe where no guidebook writer or trip planner neverl loses sleep advising a tourist to go ahead and do it!

Paris is actually a great town to just go wandering about, sans guidebook. But you have to be careful not to wander into some areas, and if you've the kids in tow, you may not want to wander into some areas with vice on display. Likewise Amsterdam (a much safer city than Paris) --- and guidebooks practically put you on a leash and inside a box as well if you visit Madrid.

But you can step right off a cruise ship wearing your diamond earring and rolex and wander to your heart's content in Venice, with no thought of being jumped by four masked bravos or stumbling upon a bull-baiting. (Although John Berendt did write about stumbling upon a pigeon-gassing in the Dorsoduro in City of Falling Angels).

I myself don't miss the contract killers (around Liguria, the northern European hikers still carry something like swordcanes as they stomp all over the hills), but I am sad I never got to see a Venice teeming with Venetian life -- although I've no illusion about how unsavory much of it could be. I live near unredeemed and untouristed Genoa.

TDudette,

Among the inspirations for putting up this thread was a Fodor's poster responding to a "where-to-do" question about Venice from a first timer by answering "the casino, the glass shops in Murano, a gondola ride and harry's bar." I don't want to stop people from doing those things if they enjoy them. But I do want to stop them from posting it as authoritative advice!

Somewhere between a straight guidebook (Hugh Honour's Companion Guide comes to mind) and Giordani, whose book I don't know, is Christopher Hibbert's Venice: History of a City. As the title indicates, a great deal of history as well as a long and detailed appendix on the art and architecture of Venice. The hardback would only be advised for those prepared to wear the same clothes for a week or more, but there is a paperback edition. Both editions are out of print but available from abe books.

As for John Ruskin, his blinkered view that Gothic architecture is somehow real and "moral" whereas anything in the Classical tradition is the opposite disqualifies him to me as a reliable guide to Venice. And heaven knows, his views contributed to the proliferation of Neo-Gothic excrescences in English-speaking countries around the world.

But -- Ruskin was right about Venice!

(And he certainly can't be held responsible for what people did with his insights. No fair! It happens to the best of 'em.)

Ok, so what do we have to carry so far... three volumes Ruskin, one volume Giordani, one volume (?) Hibbert, and perhaps, to balance Ruskin's view on architectural styles, an Italian classic, "Venezia e il suo estuario" by Giulio Lorenzetti (available in English as "Venice and its lagoon", another 1000+ pages tome). We need a porter now to continue wandering!

Palladio's Redentore is not real or moral?