My Venice top 10

My favorite Venetian churches and museums and chocolate cake

I haven’t lived in Venice for very long, but over the years I have spent a lot of time here. Just like in Rome, I have a list of favorite things that I return to over and over and over. Venice is bewildering and can be overwhelming. Start with these 10 things.

My Rome Top 10

I made you a Google map of my Venice top 10.

San Francesco della Vigna

One of my favorite things to do in Rome is visit churches. It is the easiest cheapest (they are free!) way to get a quick art and beauty fix. There are far fewer churches here in Venice (139 vs. more than 900) and many of them charge to enter. (If you are visiting, buy this pass.) San Francesco della Vigna is away from the fray, has a tranquil cloister, and some small Tiepolo pendentives. There is a Veronese and a Bellini here too.

Museo Fortuny

I want to live inside this museum. Mariano Fortuny did live here. The 15th-century Palazzo Pesaro Orfei was his studio and home for almost 30 years. There are terrazzo floors and dark dramatic rooms filled with gilt-framed paintings, models for opera sets, and embroidered silk dresses. There is even a taxidermied owl.

Museo di Palazzo Grimani

Like the Museo Fortuny the Palazzo Grimani was also a family home. The noble Grimani’s lived here from the 1500s until the 1800’s. My favorite room is not the much Instagrammed La Tribuna (it is beautiful!) but the dining and foliage rooms both painted in the early 1660s by Camillo Mantovano. In the dining room, the frescoed ceiling is full of game birds, fish, vegetables, and flowers. A few rooms away is a ceiling painted with fig trees, birds, and corn plants which had been imported from the Americas. Look for the tiny mouse and kitten hidden in the leaves.

Sacher torte at Rosa Salva

I am still searching for my favorite cup of coffee in Venice (It might be here) but I have definitely found my favorite sweet treat. There are a couple of Rosa Salva cafes but I like the one in front of the hospital in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo. There are lots of outside tables (watch out for aggressive birds who also want your snack) and a few tables inside that are perfect on a cold dreary day. The Sacher torte here is a slim rectangle of cake layers that are covered with crackly chocolate icing and almost no apricot jam (my least favorite jam flavor.)

Al Mercà

When I am missing a pizza mortadella snack I head towards the Rialto market and get a tiny sandwich from this tiny counter tucked into a corner. They do close in the middle of the day and the thin slices of mortadella are not stuffed into pizza Bianca. But you can get a glass of natural wine and lean against the wall for just long enough to revive and be ready to dive back into one of the busiest areas in Venice.

Ponte dell'Accademia

Rhymes with macadamia. I know it is unimaginative but I just can’t not stop and gasp and take a picture here. (The image at the beginning of this newsletter is one of literally thousands I have on my camera roll)

Fondamenta de la Pasina (in front of the the San Silvestro vaporetto stop)

In Rome, I was always on the hunt for spolia. Here in Venice, the spoils of the vast empire of the republic are not quite so many or as obvious. I love these columns and fragments of arches, once part of a palace that was owned by the Pasina family in 1420.

Monumento ai Tetrarchi (Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs)

These four Roman emperors were carved out of precious amaranthine-hued porphyry in 300BC-ish, brought to Venice from Constantinople in 1204, and are now just there on a corner of the Basilica San Marco for us to see. My good pal Courtney loves these guys as much as I do.

Campiello Pisani

I almost don’t want to tell you why I love this campiello. It kind of ruins the surprise. Stand in the courtyard of the Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia in the Palazzo Pisani just off Campo Santo Stefano and listen to the conservatory students practicing.

Lido

I am late to the Lido party. Like all Italians, Venetians have summer figured out. They are not in the city with the crowds. They are at the beach. Lido is only three vaporetto stops from San Marco. We spent most of July and August under an umbrella and swimming in the sea. Do I love the Adriatic yet? No. But I love the long wide Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta, I love the wild (but not too wild) beaches along the Murazzi walls and Alberoni dunes. I love the air-conditioned buses that come every 10 minutes. I love having a sunset beer with a view of Venice. I love the kiosks that serve hamburgers and mezcal margaritas. I love the Miss Havisham vibes of the deserted Hotel des Bains along the Lungomare. I am looking forward to a long winter walk to the lighthouse at San Nicolò.