Venice is drowning, not metaphorically but literally, at a rate of 1–2 millimetres a year, a city built on millions of wooden piles driven into the mud of a lagoon 1,600 years ago, sinking under its own weight and the weight of the 30 million tourists who visit it every year. The acqua alta, the high water that floods St. Mark’s Square and the streets as the tide rises, is becoming more frequent and more severe. The city’s permanent population has fallen from 175,000 in 1951 to fewer than 50,000 today, pushed out by the tourism economy that has turned Venice into the most visited city per capita in the world. And yet, walk the streets of Cannaregio in the early morning, the mist on the canals, the silence, the city just waking up, the Rialto market traders setting out their fish on beds of ice, and you will understand why Venice is still, after everything, the most beautiful city in the world, and why falling in love with it is not a choice but an inevitability. Here is how to love Venice properly.

In Love With Venice, A Guide

• Stay overnight, the city empties after 5pm: 80% of Venice’s visitors are day-trippers. They arrive at the Santa Lucia station at 10am, follow the yellow signs to San Marco (the yellow signs lead you past the souvenir shops, not the city), spend four hours shuffling through the crowd on the Rialto Bridge, eat a mediocre and overpriced meal in a restaurant with a menu in six languages, and leave at 5pm, vowing never to return. The solution: stay overnight. After the last train departs, the city empties. The streets of Cannaregio, Dorsoduro, and Castello, the residential neighbourhoods where actual Venetians actually live, are quiet, lit by the glow of the streetlamps on the water, and the experience of walking through a Venice that belongs to the Venetians, not to the tourists, is one of the most beautiful and romantic experiences in Europe. Book a small hotel or an apartment in Cannaregio (the Ghetto, the oldest Jewish ghetto in the world, 1516, a beautiful and quiet neighbourhood with some of the best restaurants in the city) or Dorsoduro (the artists’ quarter, across the Accademia Bridge, quieter than San Marco). Budget: €120–200 a night for a decent hotel room in the shoulder season
• Do not eat on the Grand Canal, or in San Marco. The restaurants with a view of the Rialto Bridge and the menus in six languages charge €30 for a plate of spaghetti alle vongole that costs €12 in a trattoria two streets back. Your rules: if the menu is in English, German, French, and Chinese, walk away. If the waiter is standing outside, beckoning you in, walk away. If there is a photograph of the food, walk faster. The best meals in Venice are in the bacari, the wine bars of the city, small, dark, wood-panelled, serving cicchetti (the Venetian answer to tapas, small plates of seafood, cured meats, cheeses, and vegetables) for €1–3 each, with a glass of wine (un’ombra, “a shadow”, a small glass of the house wine) for €1–2. The essential bacaro crawl: start at Cantina Do Mori (the oldest bacaro in Venice, 1462, the wood-panelled interior, the hanging copper pots, and the best francobolli, tiny sandwiches, in the city), continue to All’Arco (the most famous bacaro, the cicchetti are made fresh every morning by the owner’s mother, and the fried seafood is the best in the San Polo), and finish at Al Merca (a standing-room-only bar next to the Rialto fish market, a glass of prosecco and the best baccalà mantecato, creamed salt cod on a slice of polenta, in Venice. Total cost: ~€15 for a meal of cicchetti and several glasses of wine)
• Get out on the water, not on a gondola: A gondola ride costs €80 for 30 minutes during the day, €100 after 7pm, and the experience, the narrow canals, the bridges, the palazzi, the gondolier who may or may not sing, is beautiful, overpriced, and rushed. The alternative: take a traghetto, a gondola ferry, across the Grand Canal. The traghetti are the public-transport gondolas, operated by the same guild, crossing the canal at seven points between the train station and St. Mark’s. The crossing takes 2 minutes, costs €2 (€0.70 for residents), and standing in a gondola crossing the Grand Canal, the water lapping at the hull, the palazzi on either side, the light on the water, is 90% of the gondola experience for 2.5% of the price. The essential traghetto: the crossing from Pescheria (the fish market) to Santa Sofia, the views of the Rialto and the Grand Canal are the best. Or take the vaporetto №1, the water bus, down the Grand Canal at sunset (€9.50 for a single ticket, but a day pass, ~€25, is better value. The ride from Piazzale Roma to San Marco takes 45 minutes, passes every major palazzo on the canal, and the light, the setting sun turning the marble facades to gold, is one of the most beautiful experiences in Venice)