VGB Blog
There is no wrong time to visit Venice. This is one of the few travel clichés that is actually true — the city rewards visitors in every season, and each period of the year offers a version of Venice that is impossible to experience at any other time. The fog-softened silences of January. The blossom-scented […]
Most visitors to Venice know that Murano, Burano and Torcello exist. They appear on every tourist map, they feature in every guidebook, and the boats that serve them depart throughout the day from the Fondamente Nove and from San Zaccaria. But there is a significant difference between knowing these islands exist and actually understanding what […]
There is a particular quality to the light in Venice in the hour before sunset. It has been painted by Canaletto, Turner and Monet. It has been described by Henry James, Jan Morris and John Ruskin. Photographers travel from across the world to capture it. And yet all of these attempts — however skilled, however […]
It is one of the most common questions in travel planning, and in Venice it is particularly pointed: do I book a private guided tour, or do I explore on my own?
Venice is in a paradox. It is one of the most visited cities on earth — welcoming somewhere between 25 and 30 million visitors a year into a historic centre with a resident population of fewer than 50,000 people — and it is also one of the most fragile. The same qualities that make it […]
There are cities with great art, and there are cities that are themselves works of art. Venice is rare among the places in the world that belong to the second category — a city where the architecture, the paintings, the sculptures and the urban fabric itself constitute a single, continuous artistic achievement that unfolded over […]
There is no city in the world quite like Venice — which means there is also no city quite like Venice to arrive in for the first time, map in hand, with no idea which way is north. The streets do not go where you expect them to. The bridges appear without warning. The water […]
One day in Venice. For millions of travellers every year, that is the reality — a single day to take in one of the most complex, layered and visually overwhelming cities on earth. Whether you are arriving on a connecting journey through northern Italy, fitting Venice into a busy itinerary, or simply returning after a […]
Most visitors to Venice walk the same well-worn path: St. Mark’s Basilica, the Rialto Bridge, a gelato, and back to the hotel. It is a perfectly fine itinerary — but it misses the point entirely. Venice was not built for land. It was built for water. The city’s soul, its scale, and its centuries of […]
When Leonardo Loredan became Doge in 1501, Venice was teetering on the edge of great peril. During his twenty-year rule, he masterfully navigated the Republic through the turbulent League of Cambrai—an alliance of France, the Pope, the Holy Roman Empire, and others designed to crush Venetian power. Despite early defeats, Loredan’s political skill and diplomacy […]
Santorio Santorio (1561–1636), a Venetian physician and inventor, profoundly shaped modern medical science. He pioneered the use of the pulsilogium, a pendulum-based instrument that precisely measured the pulse—an innovation built on Galileo’s laws of motion. Through quantifying human vitals, Santorio transformed medical observation into a scientific practice
On Sunday, September 7, 2025, Venice will once again host the Regata Storica, its iconic historical regatta along the Grand Canal. This annual event, held on the first Sunday of September, is a living echo of Venice’s maritime and civic grandeur—rich in history, pageantry, and fierce competition.