Walking Through Stories: Literary Landmarks of Venice

Venice has always been more than a beautiful city of canals and palazzi: it is a place of mystery, romance and intrigue, and countless authors have set their stories among its winding streets and grand monuments. If you’d like to see Venice through the eyes of a writer—and then walk in their footsteps—here are four unforgettable books, each tied to a specific Venetian landmark. Read the novel, then seek out the real-world setting on your next trip, and you’ll discover how fiction and history mingle in the very stones of La Serenissima.

Let’s begin at the opera. In Donna Leon’s Death at La Fenice, Commissario Guido Brunetti is called in when a world-famous conductor is found dead in his dressing room at Teatro La Fenice. Leon’s descriptions of the velvet-draped boxes, the glittering chandelier and the hushed corridors behind the stage make you feel as if you, too, are creeping through the dark wings, searching for clues. When you visit the newly rebuilt La Fenice (reborn after the fire of 1996), take the guided tour: you’ll recognize the grand foyer and the horseshoe-shaped auditorium, and afterward you can stay for an evening performance—just as Leon’s characters do—to sense the same thrill of music and menace.

From the roar of the opera house we move to the hush of a private palace on the Grand Canal. Henry James’s novella The Aspern Papers unfolds within the decaying grandeur of Palazzo Barbaro, where an ambitious biographer woos the shy niece of a long-dead poet to get hold of her uncle’s secret letters. James himself lived for a time at Barbaro, and his evocation of its faded frescoes, sunlit garden and ornate salon still hangs in the air. Although the palazzo is not open to the public, you can glide past on the vaporetto, admire its pink façade and step off at the nearby gondola landing. Pause there for a moment’s quiet—imagine the writer pacing these stones as he spun his tale of passion and betrayal.

Next, cross the Rialto Bridge, Venice’s medieval heart of commerce, where Shakespeare set the climactic scenes of The Merchant of Venice. “What news on the Rialto?” asks Shylock, and through those stone arches merchants and moneylenders haggled over bills of exchange and fortunes. Today the bridge still hums with activity: fish stalls and jewelry shops line its covered portico, tourists and Vaporetti jostle for space, and gondoliers call out below. Stand in the center, look down at the canal’s emerald waters and picture Antonio and Bassanio as they negotiated their lives and debts in exactly the same spot five centuries ago.

Finally, venture into the shadowy world beneath the Doge’s Palace in Steve Berry’s thriller The Venetian Betrayal. Antiquarian-book dealer Cotton Malone descends into secret vaults and forgotten prison cells, uncovering conspiracies that date back to the days of the Serenissima’s mighty rulers. When you take the “secret itineraries” tour of Palazzo Ducale, you will climb the Golden Staircase, cross the Bridge of Sighs and glimpse the dank cells where prisoners once languished. Every corridor seems to whisper of hidden plots—just as Berry’s novel suggests.

By pairing each of these four books with its real-life monument, you can experience Venice on two levels: the magic of storytelling and the tangible reality of stone, water and sky. Pack your novel in your daybag, put on comfortable shoes, and get ready to read—and then to roam—through one of the world’s most enchanting cities. Happy reading, and even happier travels!