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REAL VENICE
GUIDED TOURS IN VENICE
To discover an alternative Venice ,
out of the clichés and the usual routes,
to reveal its hidden soul -
REAL VENICE
GUIDED TOURS IN VENICE
Itineraries on foot and by boat
in search of a more authentic Venice
An unusual opportunity for your visit to Venice Explore our proposals
Real Venice: itineraries on foot boat tours exclusive activities in Venice
Are you interested in discovering a different Venice?
A more authentic Venice, beyond the usual platitudes?
Knowing everyday life, cuisine, anecdotes, curiosities, and so on?
So follow us, we’ll be your private guide and adviser.
You can choose from: walking tours, boat tours, sports, and gourmet activities!
We also offer private transport and assistance.
Venice off the beaten track
Team
We are a group of professionals, including guides and tour leaders, at your service to offer you the best possible experience in Venice.
What they say about us
Venice off the beaten path
Eight Venetian routes off the usual tourist paths
Cannaregio is the "sestiere" (the Venetian word for "district") placed on the northwest side of the city.
This tour, from "Ca' d'Oro" to "Tre Archi", consists in discovering some of the most ancient Venetian
Confraternities, visiting the Ghetto and some of the less known but most fascinating churches in Venice.
Through this route, from "Rialto" to "Fondamente Nove", you can discover part of the area north of
Piazza San Marco.
You'll visit some characteristic courts (among others, the one where Marco Polo's family used to live),
you'll discover the beautiful Renaissance church of S. Maria dei Miracoli, you'll go back in time looking
for curiosities about the relationship between Venice and the German Empire, you'll admire the
magnificent Chiesa dei Gesuiti, and the Lagoon panorama.
Rialto was the heart of the economic power of Venice, as the story of this merchant city rose essentially
around the Rialto market.
This route starts from "Rialto" and ends at the Railway Station. You will go back to those times when this
city was a unique place in the world. In Campo San Giacomo you'll breathe a calm and undisturbed folk
atmosphere, with its benches under the trees and children playing all around.
This tour, starting from the Railway Station and ending up at "S. Basilio", will show you one of the most
beautiful churches in the city: the Chiesa dei Frari.
You will also admire charming hidden courts, vast squares, and ancient churches rich in history and
anecdotes. The tour ends at Fondamenta delle Zattere on the Canale della Giudecca, with the magic view
of the Molino Stucky and the beautiful Palladian masterpieces.
Dorsoduro is the southern district of the city. In this tour, from "Accademia" to "Zattere", you'll go through a mysterious and fascinating journey. You'll be discovering from the spectacular and esoteric church of Madonna della Salute to the origins of the first casinos, through the history of Venetian masks, to one of the last yards where gondolas are built and repaired.
Giudecca is the isle south of the city. Once rich in gardens and looms, an industrial center in the XIX century, nowadays it's relaxing and calm, away from the hectic life of tourists in the city center. The isle is well-known thanks to the Chiesa del Redentore, but there are plenty of reasons why it's worth a visit: the panorama embracing the whole of Venice, its peaceful courts with people meeting for a chat by the doorstep. The visit ends up in Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, from whose tower the view is sometimes better than from San Marco's.
Castello is the eastern district of Venice. It's the city's most "true" area, the unchanged side of ancient Venetian life. The route, from "Giardini" to "Arsenale", will make you discover Venetians' everyday life. The fulcrum of the visit is the church of San Pietro in Castello, Venice's extreme east, where few tourists come. The tour ends in front of the Arsenale, the heart of the naval power of Venice.
Castello is the eastern district of Venice. It's the most authentic area of the city where you can see the unchanged life of Venetians. The route, from "Arsenale" to "Celestia", will make you discover the relationships between Venetians and the foreign communities, among others the Greek one, but also the ancient connection with the Order of Knights of Malta, which is still alive. The itinerary finishes with a visit to the church of San Francesco della Vigna and its charming cloisters.
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
Venice guided tours
Venice highlights
The heart of Venice is a square: Saint Mark’s Square. Entering by the two monumental columns in front of the lagoon (the so-called “water square”), near the Bridge of Sighs, suddenly we can admire the history of the Republic of Venice displayed: we can see the Doge’s Palace, the seat of government and center of political and administrative life of the city, the Basilica, with its golden mosaics and precious marbles, the Procuratie, location of the oldest and luxurious cafeteria, and moreover the Clock Tower and the Bell Tower. The walk then leads to the Grand Canal and the famous Rialto Bridge through beautiful and hidden corners, which allow you to admire the beautiful Theater La Fenice and the Bovolo Staircase, the Mercerie street with its luxurious boutiques, but also the characteristic Campo Santa Maria Formosa.
Duration: about 2/3 hours
So-called the “most beautiful lounge in the world”, Saint Mark’s Square with its monuments, colors, and perspectives, is the background of the beautiful interior of the Doge’s Palace, where you can visit the grandiose halls of government with the important artworks representative of the glories of the Republic of Venice, the charming residence of the Doge, the solemn halls where justice was administered and the Bridge of Sighs, through which you can reach the fearful state prisons. Then we move to the nearby Saint Mark’s Basilica, which is like an ancient jewel case of beautiful treasures, but also the most important and loved church in Venice, covered inside by thousands of square feet of shiny mosaics. The oriental aspect of the architecture testifies the deep ties between Venice and Byzantium.
On request we can organize a visit to the Secret Itineraries of the Doge's Palace
Duration: about 2/3 hours
Additional cost: Doge’s Palace and Basilica admission ticket
Note: an appropriate dress for a place of worship is requested
Walking along the banks of the Grand Canal, where the reflections of the water blend with the colors and the grandeur of the fruit, vegetable, and fish stalls at the Rialto Market, which has always been the economic and financial center of the Republic of Venice. The narrow streets of the district of St. Polo lead to the great religious complex of the Friar’s Church, which contains illustrious tombs and inestimable artworks, above all the Assumption of Titian. The tour continues to the nearby Great School of St. Roch, one of the few Venetian confraternities to have been spared from the Napoleonic suppression, where you can still admire the original and monumental rooms decorated by the Jacopo Tintoretto’s precious cycle of paintings.
Duration: about 2/3 hours
Additional cost: Friar’s Church and School of St. Roch admission tickets
Note: an appropriate dress for a place of worship is requested
Many important merchant families lived near Rialto: among the most famous were the Polos, which we can still visit the place of its thirteenth-century palace, which is a starting point for understanding international relations and trade woven by Venice through the centuries. From the nearby charming Campiello del Remer we can admire the Grand Canal and the Rialto Market. Continuing through narrow streets and hidden squares, we come to the distinctive Church of Miracles, which is like a treasure chest made of precious marbles. We then proceed to the impressive Church of Saints John and Paul, the Doges’ mausoleum, located in one of the city’s most beautiful areas.
Duration: about 2/3 hours
Additional cost: Churches admission tickets
Note: an appropriate dress for a place of worship is requested
The islands of the Venetian lagoon are small pearls scattered on the water, each one with its unique attractiveness and traditional activities. Murano, called “the small Venice” with the Grand Canal, the palaces, and the ancient Cathedral of Saints Maria and Donato, is the historical capital of blown glass. In the remaining furnaces, we can watch the work of glass masters that perpetuate old techniques and crafts. Burano is a small fishing village made of colorful houses, where its famous lace has been made for centuries. According to the old and slow processing methods, they can be manufactured only by the skilled hands of local artisans.
Duration: 4 hours to 6 hours, depending on whether 2 or 3 islands are preferred
Additional cost: vary according to the means of transportation to the islands
Note: visit on request to a glass factory and a lace workshop
We can organize personalized private tours in the museums and churches of your choice, such as the Scuola Grande dei Carmini, the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, the Venetian Museum of the 18th century in Ca’ Rezzonico Palace, the Museum of Fabrics and Perfumes at Palazzo Mocenigo, the Fortuny Museum, the Basilica della Salute and much more.
Contact us to check the availability and feasibility of the visit you want to do.
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
Venice thematic itineraries
Specific itineraries to deepen Venetian themes
This guided tour aims to tell the music history in Venice from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, following the traces of baroque theatres, musical hospitals, and places lived by great musicians enchanted by this amphibious city. Music as a complementary face of Painting.
European visitors who came to Venice in the eighteenth century write reports from which shines through a city permeated and wrapped in music, almost without being able to distinguish the natural sounds of water flowing in the canals and the cries of seagulls by those played by instruments in churches, palaces, and street corners. So, from the crossroads of goods, Venice becomes an essential destination for anyone with passion and interest in music, whether sacred or popular.
This walking tour about Venice’s music winds along a path that goes from San Samuele to the Scuola di San Marco, passing through the Fenice, the Chiesa della Pietà, and other themed stages.
Duration: about 3 hours
Participants: 10 people max
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
It’s a walking tour through the streets of Venice in search of traces of the gastronomic culture of the city, which is also anything but obvious! Starting from the very first lagoon recipes dating back to the times when Venice was only one of the provinces of Byzantium, passing through the riot of spices brought by trade with the Levant, through a dizzying series of foreign contamination, you get to the kitchen of today, or at least what survives.
Exotic scents, bizarre recipes, and curious habits at the table will be narrated to discover this fascinating side of Venetian culture, never veiled enough, and that risks disappearing overwhelmed by the prevailing globalization of pizzas and frozen food.
Duration: about 3 hours
Participants: 8 people max
The tour takes place in the afternoon
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
For centuries they were the backbone of everyday Venetian life, nowadays the artisans are reduced to a handful of few irreducibles who, with great difficulty, survive the transformations that mass tourism has caused.
Where the flattening of the quality level of tourism has led to a proliferation of small shops selling plastic souvenirs or Chinese glass, a few brave continues to work according to the ancient traditions, using quality materials and infusing into their products the right mix of craft technique and artistic creativity.
This Venice artisans tour offers a visit to some of these workshops where you can still admire the craftsmen at work. Many of them survive with difficulty and are at risk of extinction, with serious loss of the historical memory of a community that is not only Venetian.
The aim is therefore to help them by providing the opportunity for greater visibility and awareness by the visitors of the value of their work and the high risk they are running.
Tour Customizable
Duration: about 3 hours
Participants: 8 people max
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
In 1787 the Societas, formed by members of the nobility and the upper Venetian bourgeoisie, which until then had managed the theater San Beneto, decided to found a new theater, which should have been the most important in the city.
Giovanni Antonio Selva was chosen as the architect.
It will take more than two years to create La Fenice Theater.
The theater was inaugurated on Ascension Day in 1792 with the "Giuochi d'Agrigente" of Paisiello.
La Fenice immediately became the equivalent of La Scala in Milan and San Carlo in Naples.
In 1859, La Fenice closed its doors as a sign of rebellion against Austrian domination. In this explosive atmosphere, Luchino Visconti will set his film "Senso" in 1954.
La Fenice then as a symbol of the aspiration for freedom of the Venetian people.
These and other interesting stories will be told during the visit to the spectacular Venetian historical theater, which burned and rose again from its ashes many times, just like a phoenix.
This is not a group visit (that you can book directly on the Theater website), on the contrary, you will have a private professional guide who will take you personally through the fascinating history of its halls.
The visit lasts about an hour and can be carried out in Italian, English, and French.
Duration: about 1 hour
Participants: 8 people max
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
This photographic tour in Venice consists of a 3-hour leisurely walk incorporating a photographic workshop with a professional photographer.
During the tour you’ll be able to acquire or improve your photographic technique, gain new skills, learn about light, points of view, equipment, composition, and discuss general aspects of photography or single topics. No specific knowledge is required, the course will be adapted to suit the participants’ experience level.
Together with the photographer, participants will be accompanied by a well-established city guide who loves the City, its history, and legends, ready to share with you details and stories about the places visited, which in turn will help you appreciate the photographic subjects chosen, or help you select your own.
This is a new way to visit, get to know and see the sights of Venice, avoiding the masses of tourists and at the same time learn new photographic skills or improve. A fantastic experience in one of the most beautiful cities in the world!
Duration of the tour: about 3 hours
Participants: minimum 2 up to 8 people
You can even arrange a simple workshop without the guided tour.
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
Rosalba Carriera, Giulia Lama, Marietta Robusti: Venetian women who are considered as important personalities of Italian Art History.
This itinerary wants to present their life and work through the visit to the places where they lived and where their paintings are kept.
We will follow the traces of Rosalba Carriera, nowadays considered one of the main female painters of the world, who brought the pastel technique to its maximum achievements. We will explore the district of Dorsoduro, where she was born and lived, and admire her works at the Accademia Galleries or in Ca’ Rezzonico Palace.
Here we can stop, or you can decide to continue to Santa Maria Formosa, looking for Giulia Lama, and finally walk to the wonderful district of Madonna dell’Orto, where Marietta Robusti, the daughter of the great Jacopo Tintoretto, was born.
The complete itinerary about the woman Venetian painters lasts a full day or two half days (about 6 hours), and it is an excellent occasion to visit some lovely places, churches, and museums that tourists do not so well know but where you can find the authentic soul of Venice.
Otherwise, it is possible just to have a brief tour focused on Rosalba Carriera, which lasts about 3 hours.
Participants: max of 20 people
The Women Venetian painters tour was created in collaboration with Dr. Nicoletta Consentino
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
Venice is synonymous with art, but we often limit ourselves to considering past artworks, forgetting that Venice is also important as a laboratory and international showcase of contemporary art.
The Venice contemporary art tour is designed for those who intend to approach for the first time, to better understand languages and styles of art that basically talk about us and our present; but also for those who are already passionate about and want to deepen some themes.
The itinerary can therefore be built on the interests of the visitor, based on four major themes:
- La Biennale: Giardini and Arsenale [each takes about a couple of hours]
- The major museums of contemporary art: Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana – Guggenheim – Vedova
- Temporary exhibitions
- Contemporary Architecture
Duration: about 1 hour
Participants: max of 10 people
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
L’Altra Venezia proposes a visit to the contemporary art galleries led by an Art Advisor, who will guide you in comprehending the current exhibitions and discovering the most interesting Italian and international artists in each gallery.
Why should you visit a private gallery with an art advisor?
The Venice Art Advisor is a contemporary art specialist and art market expert. His role starts with selecting the best galleries and exhibitions to visit, according to the artistic research, the artists’ value, the curatorship, and participation in art fairs. The visit is carried out with guidance to the current exhibition and the works of the artists represented by selected galleries, focusing on the artist’s career and quotations.
Both full-day and half-day programs include a visit to the largest private gallery in Venice, representative of well-known artists, then one or two galleries in the San Marco’s area, which expose international authors alternated with emerging artists, continuing, optionally, with a visit to one or two more galleries in the Giudecca island, focused in more experimental art, to finish with a nice aperitif on the Venetian lagoon.
If you are interested in purchasing a work of art, the Art Advisor will accompany you in negotiating with the gallery and managing purchase and after-sales practices.
The number of galleries to visit is not fixed. This is not a sightseeing tour, but a visit to private galleries, which may vary from the importance of the exhibition and the artists represented to the time the visit is performed or according to the customers’ interest.
Options:
Full day: 10,30 am – 6 pm (with lunch break)
Half day: 10-1 am
Participants: max 8 people
Minimum notice time: 10 days
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
On the eighteenth anniversary of Marco Polo's death, L'altra Venezia is pleased to present a new guided tour itinerary dedicated to him.
“Cities are a combination of many things: of memory, of desires, of signs, of language; cities are places of exchange, exchanges of words, of desires, of memories” (I. Calvino, American lessons)
Venice has been a mercantile city since its first lagoon conformation. The need to develop commercial relationships via water soon revealed an excellent economic/social development opportunity. Thus, Venice became a point of exchange between East and West, not only for goods but also for people and ideas.
Its merchants made the city rich, transformed and shaped it, made it multi-ethnic and permeable to the arts and styles of all the cultures with which they came into contact.
After the golden centuries of trade, the protagonists, the goods, and the routes changed, but until the end of the Republic, Venice remained radically and intrinsically a mercantile city, a connection point between Europe and Asia, an engine of culture and progress.
Our itinerary is dedicated to this theme, intertwining it with the suggestions and events concerning the most famous Venetian merchant in the world: Marco Polo.
“Perché Marco è Venezia. Perché se Marco incarna l’eroe che scardina le regole e le convenzioni sino a proiettarsi laddove nessuno aveva mai osato (...), la città lagunare è primattrice assoluta e indiscutibile” (E. Orlando, The Venices of Marco Polo)
For information and reservations write to: info@laltravenezia.it
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
Venice boat tours
Private boat trips in Venice and its lagoon
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
Venice Activity
Venetian sports, cultural and eno-gastronomic activities
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
Venice Services
Tourist services in Venice
L’Altra Venezia offers several tourist services in Venice and its lagoon
The private boat transfer includes an assistant who will wait for you at the platform (in case you arrive by train at Santa Lucia Station) or at the exit of the baggage drop-off (in case you arrive by plane at Marco Polo Airport), with a sign with your name (or code of your choice). The assistant will accompany you to the boarding (on the Grand Canal in case of arrival by train or at the airport dock in case of arrival by plane) on our private motorboat that will take you to the mooring point as close as possible to your destination (some hotels are equipped with a private pier so, in this case, you will go directly to the hotel) and, if you wish, the assistant can accompany you to the reception of your hotel.
Of course, you can also use the same service on the day of your departure, with the private boat (and assistant) that will pick you up at the hotel and take you to the railway station or airport.
In the case of groups of more than 8 people arriving at Marco Polo airport, we have several boats of various sizes that can carry up to 40 people.
These boats, however, are not allowed access to Venice's internal canals, so it will be possible to disembark only at specific points provided by the Municipality and the Harbour Office. We will choose the landing point as close as possible to your destination, then the assistant will accompany you on foot.
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
The pick-up service on foot includes an assistant who will pick you up at Santa Lucia Train Station (or Piazzale Roma) with a sign with your name (or a code of your choice) and accompany you on foot or by vaporetto (helping you, if necessary, in the purchase of tickets) to your destination in the city.
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
The accompanying service includes an assistant who accompanies you during your travels in the city and/ or in the lagoon, helping you find the right way to your destination and providing practical assistance in using the vaporetto, buying tickets for visits, choosing restaurants, etc.
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
For information and reservations: info@laltravenezia.it
VENICE guide e-book
“A PRACTICAL AND QUICK GUIDE TO VENICE” EBOOK
This mini-guide does not claim to be exhaustive on the huge range of possibilities to visit Venice, but simply to provide practical (sometimes extremely useful) information to make the most of a stay in the lagoon without wasting time and money.
Getting to and around the city – Boat rates – What to do – Rules to follow – What to eat [2024 EDITION revised and updated] – 3€
- Download in KINDLE format
- Download in EPUB format
- To purchase the ebook in PDF format write to the email below