Unusual City Tours in Venice

These are tours for visitors who are already familiar with the main monuments of Venice, and for those who want to explore some of the lesser-known places. “Lesser-known” does not imply less beautiful or interesting: the riches of Venice are so profuse that few, even among regular visitors, have ever seen all that is worth seeing.

Of course unconventional travellers who seek for a totally different approach to Venice might find these tours even more attractive than the classical ones.

It is a "Venice Revisited" with the aim of taking you to discover some of the lesser known treasuries of the city, selected and combined together according to unusual and specific themes.

Places that sometimes are indeed alluringly arcane, while some are accessible only by special arrangement. Far from the crowd of tourists packing the main tracks of the City, you will almost feel that Venice discloses its secrets just for you.

See our 11 unusual tours to explore the Hidden Venice!

Tour 1: Byzantine Venice 1. Middle Age Mosaics  in Venice, Murano and Torcello – full day tour

Venice was a Byzantine dependency for a while. Though soon emerging as an independent state, the cultural and artistic influences of Byzantium  on Venice were to remain  evidently strong for long time. The mosaics left by Byzantine artists in the most important IX C churches are a considerable evidence this fascinating heritage. [More Details..]

Tour 2: Byzantine Venice 2. Mosaics and Icons

Centuries of commercial and cultural interchange with the East had lent earlier Medieval art and architecture in Venice a strongly Byzantine character. When in 1453 the Turks conquered Constatinople, many Greeks moved to Venice. Among them was a group of painters from Crete and Venice became tacitly the heir of the Byzantine civilization. [More Details...]

Tour 3: Gothic in Venice. Ca’ d’Oro and Madonna dell’Orto

One of the most sumptuous and well preserved example of a Venetian Gothic merchant's home faces the Rialto Market, on the opposite bank of the Grand Canal. The palace contains a rich collection of paintings, frescoes and ceramic of the glorious centuries of the Venetian Republic. [More Details...]

Tour 4: The Dawn of Renaissance. The Church  of San Zaccaria, Carpaccio at the Scuola degli Schiavoni and the Miracoli’s Church

The church of San Zaccaria is the ideal place in which to observe the emergence of the Venetian Renaissance style in architecture and painting. Carpaccio, the most popular story-telling painter of the 15thC, used to depict an imaginative early Renaissance Venice, where scenes combine fantasy and reality. The Miracoli's Church is one of the most exquisite example of the architecture of early Renaissance [More Details..]

Tour 5: From St Mark’s square to Rialto. what you don’t usually see when you walk through the most popular alley of Venice

An unusual walk through the most popular shopping street of Venice. The discovery of the disregarded treasuries in the very "heart of the City" and how they can tell you so much about art and history. The Rialto Market, once the centre of commercial and financial activity, still preserves testimonies of ancient activities and old edicts aimed at controlling commercial trade [More Details...]

Tour 6: Castello. The old Shipyard,  S. Francesco della Vigna and Santi Giovanni e Paolo

Leaving behind the madding crowd of the Square, to venture in the quiet and charming little alleys of the district of Castello. Passing several bridges and small “campi” we’ll get to the ancient Arsenale, the vast dockyard where galleys were built. Then a slice of the Renaissance lost in a remote corner of Venice, a church with a façade by Palladio and several important paintings, including one by Veronese. [More Details...]

Tour 7: Dorsoduro 1. The Salute Church, a Squero and ... the best ice-cream in town

From the supreme masterpiece of the Venetian Baroque, a church built to commemorate a devastating plague in 1630, walking down silent alleys, we’ll see some of the most picturesque corners of Venice and  one of the few surviving gondola boatyards. Then relaxing along the Zattere, lingering over the Giudecca island, enjoying the best ice cream in town. [More Details...]

Tour 8: Dorsoduro II. Masters of color: Veronese and Tiepolo

Paolo Veronese and Giambattista Tiepolo are the kings of Venetian color. The church of San Sebastiano contains the most well preserved fresco cycle in Venice, executed by Veronese, who is buried in the church.
Not far from San Sebastiano, the Scuola dei Carmini, contains an impressive ceiling painted by Giambattista Tiepolo [More Details...]

Tour 9: Venice seen through the eyes of poets and writers

Venice has captured the hearts of many poets and writers. The city has held an unrivalled place in the Western imagination and has been endlessly described in prose and verse. Reading the words of Byron, Ruskin, Henry James or Browning we'll follow their paces in Venice, and  recognize the sites they romantically described. [More Details...]

Tour 10: Along the traces of Music in Venice: from Vivaldi to the Fenice Opera House

A journey through the history of Music in Venice, from the places where Vivaldi lived and directed his concerts, to the sanctuary of the “bel canto”, the Fenice Opera House, recently arisen from the ashes it was reduced to after a catastrophal in 1996 [More Details..]

Tour 11: Villas and Wine on the Veneto Mainland.

Between the 15th and the 18th Cs more than 2000 country residences were built throughout the Veneto by the richest Venetian families. This phenomenon became known as the Civilization of the Villas. A day to discover some of the most outstanding country houses, following the celebrated wine routes of the Veneto Region, to please both your minds and palates. [More Details...]