08 July 2026
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Venice is Venice: There is no other city like it in the world. For visitors who only pass through for a day, an old rumor persists that the food is bad. It's not. There are serious chefs here now, the coolest natural wine bars and the kind of hotel restaurants that are actually worth booking. The lagoon brings its own menu: moeche (the local delicacy of small green crabs), creamy baccalà mantecato (whipped salt cod), schie (small grey shrimp fished in the lagoon) and tiny, insanely delicate artichokes from Sant’Erasmo island that taste like nothing else in Italy.
If you’ve already ticked off St. Mark’s Basilica, the Rialto Bridge, the Doge’s Palace and an inevitably overpriced gondola ride, it’s time to go deeper. What makes this city genuinely distinctive is that art isn’t confined to museums. Masterpieces turn up in churches, palaces, scuole (home of Venice’s historic fraternal unions) and civic buildings that most visitors walk straight past. The entire city is an open-air gallery, curated over centuries. And once your eyes have had their fill, there’s the food.
Two days in Venice is never enough, but a traveler who follows their appetite for 48 hours will leave with a real read on the floating city.
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Where to Stay in Venice
In Venice, there is no such thing as a new hotel. The city sits on a foundation of wooden piles driven into the lagoon bed centuries ago, which means every place you sleep here carries real history — former palazzi, converted pilgrim hospices, ancient merchant residences. Our MICHELIN Guide Inspectors have vetted 31 hotels across the city, from Three-MICHELIN-Key grande dames Aman Venice and Belmond Hotel Cipriani down to a run of One-MICHELIN-Key boutique spots.
For the grandest version of staying inside a Venetian palazzo, the Two-MICHELIN-Key Gritti Palace, A Luxury Collection Hotel is the answer. Originally built by the Pisani family in 1475 and later the private residence of Doge Andrea Gritti, the Gothic palazzo on the Grand Canal has hosted the world’s most celebrated guests for centuries. American novelist Ernest Hemingway wrote here; former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill painted from its terrace. No two of its rooms look the same: Each one boasts a different arrangement of Venetian fabrics, period furnishings and Murano glass. The Gritti Terrace, with tables set inches from the Grand Canal and a view of Santa Maria della Salute floating directly across the water, is one of the most romantic seats in the city. In the kitchen, Executive Chef Alberto Fol runs both Club del Doge and the Gritti Epicurean School, a private kitchen where he leads tastings.
One-MICHELIN-Key Palazzo Venart Luxury Hotel in Santa Croce is one of Venice’s most discreet, most goloso (gluttonous) addresses with 18 rooms dripping in stunning jewel-toned interiors and one of the only private hotel gardens in the city. Wall fabrics and pillows throughout draw on Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, the Venetian silk house that has woven velvet since the 1400s and still hand-weaves its soprarizzo velvet on 18th-century looms. It’s also home to Glam Enrico Bartolini, the Two-MICHELIN-Star restaurant from Chef Enrico Bartolini, with resident Chef Donato Ascani running the kitchen day to day. The menu is built around whatever Ascani pulls from the Rialto Market and Sant’Erasmo each morning. Breakfast comes from that same kitchen, so pace yourself.
For something truly uniqueduring your two days in Venice, check into the MICHELIN-selected The Venice Venice Hotel, which describes its vision as postvenezianità, post-Venetian-ness. The sexy, sultry hotel sits inside the 13th-century Byzantine palazzo Ca’ da Mosto, owned by the founders of Italian fashion house Golden Goose. Every room is a different vibe and room 01 has the best amenity: the city’s first-ever private en suite pool. Its common space, Venice M’Art, is part concept store, part café, part all-day restaurant. If you caught it this spring, you may have noticed the mic-drop exterior project, French artist JR’s temporary facade installation. The piece continues inside, a permanent tapestry called Il Gesto, reimagining Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana with 176 faces from Refettorio Paris, the anti-waste kitchen Massimo Bottura helped found.
The One-MICHELIN-Key Il Palazzo Experimental brings a more affordable stay to Dorsoduro, but don’t mistake that for less cool. The Wes Anderson-esque aesthetic of the Experimental Group attracts the cooler crowd, and its Experimental Cocktail Club is where locals post up for libations. If you overnight here, don’t miss Ristorante Adriatica downstairs, where Chef Denis Begiqi turns out a bright, contemporary spin on Italian cooking inside a former naval transport company’s headquarters.
Day 1
Morning — Where to Have Breakfast in Venice
The best perks of waking up in Venice are the small things like the sound of water, gondoliers singing to themselves as they rig their boats for the day, and the ability to wander without crowds and without a set destination. Drop your bags and dive in. The Venetian breakfast is simple: a cornetto or cream-filled pastry and a proper espresso taken standing at the bar. Hit Pasticceria Tonolo, a historical pasticceria that opened in 1886 in Dorsoduro, which serves espresso in charming blue and white porcelain cups. Go early as the pastries sell out. Closer to San Marco, Rosa Salva’s several locations make a reliable backup.
8:30 a.m. — How to Visit the Rialto Market
As you cross the bridge back into San Polo, look for La Bottega dei Mascareri tucked in the chaos of Rialto’s western side. Brothers Sergio and Massimo Boldrin have been hand-making paper-mâché masks here since 1984 and they’re so good that Stanley Kubrick’s production team sourced them for the 1999 movie Eyes Wide Shut. Most of the masks you’ll see in the stalls around them are made in China. The Boldrins’ are not.
11 a.m. — The Bacaro Circuit
Sampling Venice’s bacari is one of the city’s best pastimes. At a bacaro, a small, casual bar offering drinks and nibbles, enjoy an ombra (a small glass of wine, named for the shade where wine carts once parked along the Rialto) or a Select spritz (Select is the original Venetian recipe invented in Castello in 1920) along with some cicchetti. These small bites, displayed in a glass bar counter, include everything from sarde in saor (sweet-and-sour sardines with onions) to creamy baccalà mantecato served on small slices of bread.Begin at All’Arco, a tiny counter near the Rialto and deservedly one of the most famous bacari in the city. Order what you see; it changes constantly. From there, Vino Vero in Cannaregio offers a more contemporary, cool-wine-bar version with a serious natural wine list and more than just the standard cicchetti you see all over town. Hope you get there at a good time to score a table on the canal. For the oldest version of this ritual, Cantina Do Mori has been pouring wine near the Rialto since 1462.
1:30 p.m. — Where to Have Lunch in Venice
Cicchetti can be a full-on lunch, or it can be the in-between before a full meal. Today it’s the latter. Save room for Al Covo in Castello, where Cesare and Diane Benelli have been cooking delicious things since 1987. Sourcing is heavily from the lagoon islands, including the Sant’Erasmo island garden plots of the Osti in Orto project, which Cesare co-founded. Order the raw fish starter, the seafood pasta and the fish of the day — and don’t miss the spider crab if it’s on the menu. It’s served in its own roe sauce, and it’s out of this world.
4 p.m. — Learning About Venice’s Art and History
Venice has an outsized claim to art for its size, even before you factor in that it hosts the most important contemporary art event on Earth, the Venice Biennale. Step into Fondazione Querini Stampalia, a Renaissance palazzo whose ground floor was redesigned by Italian designer and architect Carlo Scarpa, paired with a working library and a small, exquisite collection of Venetian genre paintings. It’s one of Venice’s coolest places to visit. Less than five minutes away, Palazzo Grimani is far less crowded than most museums in the city, and the Tribuna, a Pantheon-inspired chamber the Grimani family built in the 1500s to display its own antiquities collection, still ringed with Mannerist frescoes, is something to see.4:30 p.m. — Take Something Local Home
Venice’s artisan stores are easy to miss as most of them are hidden amidst tourist shops. Quorami is where the owners make every single belt and friulane slipper by hand in the shop itself, cutting leather to your size in real time and running through a wall of buckles until they find the right one. The friulane come in Fortuny fabrics sometimes, but once that fabric is gone, it’s gone.For glassware, LAGUNA~B is the only store of its kind in Venice, founded in 1994 by pioneer Parisian glass designer Marie Brandolini, now run by her son Marcantonio. Danghyra makes everything it sells by hand from white porcelain, the kind of ceramics that end up in Italy’s finest hotels. Venezia Stampa prints on paper using drawings by local artists, and products at Relight Venice, Michela Bortolozzi’s eco-project with cool candles and jewelry, are made entirely in the city.
5:30 p.m. — Aperitivo at Your Hotel
Venice does the hotel bar better than almost anywhere else in Italy, and wherever you’re staying, the hotel answers the question of where to drink your aperitivi. At the Gritti Palace, it’s Bar Longhi, with Grand Canal views directly in front of you, the martini trolley working the room and manager Cristiano Luciani’s signature wild fennel pour that’s reason enough to make a reservation just for drinks. At Palazzo Venart, it’s the private garden out back and inventive pours. And people flock to Venice Venice Hotel for the citrus foam-topped Americano in Venice M’Art. If you want to bump shoulders with locals, the Experimental Cocktail Club at Il Palazzo Experimental is the place to be. The menu rotates every few months, and head bartender Pietro Lorefice knows what he’s doing.8:30 p.m. — Dining Like a Doge
For a first night in Venice, Glam Enrico Bartolini, the Two-MICHELIN-Star restaurant inside the One-MICHELIN-Key Palazzo Venart, is where it’s at (it’s also the only Two-Star in the city). Resident Chef Donato Ascani hand-selects his seafood each morning at the Rialto Market and pulls his vegetables from Sant’Erasmo, and every lagoon herb earns its place on the plate. There are two tasting menus plus the freedom to order à la carte — however, it would be a tragedy to skip one of the tasting menus. The food plays like a lagoon version of Alice in Wonderland, one surprise after another — where tiny lagoon fish sit on dollops of sauce, each one a different flavor entirely, surprising your palate every step of the way.
Day 2
10 a.m. — Shop at a Working Loom
The ritual of a morning espresso and a pastry remains the same today. Once fueled, head to Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, the same silk house behind the wall fabrics and pillows at Palazzo Venart. The actual weaving workshop, where 18th-century looms are still run by hand, requires a reservation if you want to see the soprarizzo velvet being made rather than just sold. There’s a shop inside, and it will be hard to leave empty-handed.1 p.m. — A Modern Venetian Lunch
At MICHELIN-selected Osteria Giorgione da Masa, Chef Masahiro Homma’s cooking traces a quietly surprising overlap between Japanese technique and Venetian ingredients: handrolls built on local swordfish, gyoza, udon, a chef’s selection arriving as a dozen tiny dishes rather than separate courses. It’s a fitting emblem of the new Venice, a city that has always absorbed outside influences into a strong culinary identity of its own.2:30 p.m. — Where to Get Gelato
Cannaregio’s answer to Venice’s artisanal gelato question is Bacaro del Gelato on Fondamenta della Misericordia, run by two young Venetians. The pistachio cremino, dark chocolate folded around pistachio cream, is the one people cross town for. Later in the afternoon, once you’ve crossed to Dorsoduro and hit the Zattere, stop at Gelateria Nico, an institution that’s been scooping since 1935. Order the gianduiotto, a slab of chocolate-hazelnut gelato submerged in fresh whipped cream, and eat it on the terrace as the light over the Giudecca Canal turns into the perfect sunset.
3 p.m. — How to Spend an Afternoon in Dorsoduro
Dorsoduro is the sestiere (neighborhood) that Venetians actually live in and is a must for your Venice itinerary. At its tip, the Punta della Dogana, the former customs house reimagined by architect Tadao Ando, is home to part of French magnate François Pinault’s contemporary art collection in one of Italy’s most striking museum spaces. A few minutes further along the Grand Canal, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection holds one of Europe’s great troves of 20th-century art: works by Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, René Magritte; Alexander Calder’s mobiles turning slowly in a sculpture garden that opens directly onto the water.Before hitting the Zattere waterfront for a stroll, duck into the neighborhood for Bar alla Toletta, Dorsoduro’s beloved tramezzini counter. The tramezzino is Venice’s answer to the sandwich: a soft, crustless triangle of white bread stuffed with anything from tuna and onions to prosciutto and artichokes, loaded enough to count as a proper snack. Along the Zattere route, the small church of San Sebastiano holds Paolo Veronese’s greatest cycle of ceiling paintings with almost no one inside.
5:30 p.m. — Where to Drink Wine, Unfiltered
Venice’s natural wine scene has its own agenda. Estro Vino e Cucina in Dorsoduro leads with one of the city’s most thoughtful small-producer lists, hundreds of bottles deep, and food good enough to constitute a meal. Nearby, Adriatico Mar, a tiny canal-side bacaro with a wooden jetty, draws everything from the Adriatic: Malvasia wine from Istria, olives and cheeses from across the sea. Stappo in Santa Croce takes a chic wine-bar-with-kitchen approach with a lengthy bottle list and food that puts top ingredients first. And Ozio in Campo Santa Maria Formosa translates its name simply as ”idleness.” Its tables fanning across the campo (field) and natural pours from small producers make for a perfect place to meet a friend.
8:30 p.m. — The Last (Venetian) Supper
At night, strolling past Piazza San Marco, you’ll catch it: the first floor of Gran Caffè Quadri glowing above the arcade, looking like the poshest dinner party in the world. The café has stood here since 1775, but in 2011 brothers Massimiliano and Raffaele Alajmo, of Three-Star Le Calandre outside Padova, made Ristorante Quadri one of Venice’s most talked-about tables. Philippe Starck’s redesign leans fully into Venice’s surrealism. Look closely: The walls are upholstered in silk brocade by Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, updated from a 16th-century pattern to weave in the brothers’ own portraits alongside satellites and rockets. And above the doorways, foxes and rabbits from the storied Parisian taxidermist Deyrolle perch with wings sprouting from their backs, a nod to the winged Lion of Venice. It is one of the most beautiful restaurants in the world, even before the food arrives.Chef Sergio Preziosa, executing Max Alajmo’s vision, works the lagoon: shallow-water fish, Sant’Erasmo vegetables, shellfish, game in season. The Cappuccino Murrina di Laguna is the kitchen’s most famous dish, the colors of Venetian murrine glass meeting the flavors of the lagoon, built around moeche, the prized soft-shell green crabs. The spaghettoni al burro e fumo con caviale asetra solo sale is what you’ll lust after when you leave: thick spaghetti with smoked butter and salt-only Asetra caviar. Enough said.
In season, the moeche arrive stuffed and deeply savory, one of those dishes that exists only in this city and only at the right time of year. The menu lets you order à la carte across three tasting menus, which is the move. The Quattro Atti is the one to know, a riff on the multicourse banquets once held at the Doge’s Palace. Courses arrive all at once in the Renaissance fashion.
For a more approachable closer, MICHELIN-selected and family-run Vini da Gigio in Cannaregio has a deep wine list and some of the best lagoon seafood and house-made pastas in Venice. You’ll find hand-drawn menu covers from kids and the coziest atmosphere — perfect to duck into for long winter meals with wine or to hide from the hot summer sun in good company.
An Off-the-Beaten-Path Excursion
If you want to do something genuinely off the beaten path during your two days in Venice, swap out a morning or afternoon on either day — or better yet, book a third day and head to Venissa restaurant. The walled vineyard on the small island of Mazzorbo grows Dorona di Venezia, a golden grape that was thought to be extinct after the catastrophic 1966 acqua alta (an exceptionally high tide) drowned every vineyard in the lagoon.Prosecco producer Gianluca Bisol discovered three surviving vines in a garden on neighboring Torcello, tracked down roughly 80 more scattered across the islands, and planted them here at an old abandoned monastery. The result is one of the rarest wines in Italy and a tasting unlike anything else in the Veneto.
One-MICHELIN-Star Venissa, run by Chiara Pavan and Francesco Brutto, builds its entire menu around what the lagoon and the vineyard provide that day. It’s a slower, stranger, more authentic version of Venice to discover, if time allows.
Hero image: The waterside terrace restaurant at The Venice Venice Hotel, one of our best places to stay in our 2 Days in Venice itinerary. © The Venice Venice Hotel
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