Planned my Venice visit the days Jeff Bezos would be done with his wedding but I guess protesters cancelled him anyway. From Mestre to Venice it’s a 20 minute bus ride that’ll cost you a whopping 3 euros round trip. Don’t stay in Venice itself, seriously.

The city itself is very claustrophobic and mysterious, with endless narrow alleys and shops that look right from a video game

You stumble constantly upon smaller canals with a myriad of stone bridges. Everything is connected yet all feels like a maze

When you get to the grand canal it's almost stunning how wide open things become. Very sharp contrast with the city itself

Tourists on the Ponte Rialto, the first bridge built across the grand canal

It's so interesting to sit and watch all the daily hustle and bustle on the grand canal as everything is done with boats

St Mark's Basilica in St Mark's square. It's a gigantic wide open plaza, feels like one of the only places people could gather in the city.

The Correr Museum building bookends the plaza

The "Campanile" clock tower. Every town has a church and clock and of course Venice has the tallest!

The Basilica is insanely opulent ( like Jesus was! ) and there was a line all around it waiting to get inside

The plaza is flanked with swanky shops of all kinds. The entire city seemed to just be gift shops and restaurants.

"Chichetti" is a thing you "must try". It's just bruschetta but you put... anything else on your slice of baguette... okay...

Last goodbye of the Grand Canal. Venice is notably cooler than the mainland so not a bad place to escape the heat wave. Still bring a water bottle to refill.

Doge’s Palace

One of the 2 big attractions that is highly recommended to book in advance to skip the line. Very glad I did. The other one, St Mark’s Basilica, already had 100+ people standing in line at 9am but nobody at the “skip the line” entrance.

The palace was where the Doge of Venice and the various councils conducted their business and meetings and where some trials were held. There’s a dungeon in the basement. The entire thing is disgustingly decadent with not one square inch left undecorated.

Fancy stairs that took years to complete. Taxpayer dollars at work

Typical room in the palace. Each one had its own function where different government officials worked

Basically what a rapper would build as a house. Many paintings are self-aggrandizing portraits of the various council members throughout the years

Part of the palace was turned into an armory museum with hundreds of weapons

Very beautiful collection all from the Venetian renaissance

Tons of guns all intricately decorated and superbly crafted

It's surprising the level of engineering they already were capable of in the 16th century

Some of the weapons are surprising and seemed more decorative or experimental

Huge chamber were votes were held. Immense with every square inch covered. You have to see it in person

Endless paintings depicting Venice historical events, leaders and landscapes

An actual Hyeronymus Bosch painting! Such a stark contrast between his artwork and the thousands of Jesus paintings

The last part of the tour is in the dungeon which... is not as opulent

Pretty awful. The toilet was a bucket.

You pass by a few windows, last views of the city the prisoners got before being put in their cage

Had to take the same picture the other 10000 tourists took that day. It's what you do. It's the meaning of life.

Correr Museum

This museum houses the Biblioteca Marciana and Archaological Museum as well so really they sell this as 3 museums when it’s just one. The Correr part I believe is some rich dude’s villa that he eventually turned into a Museum. It showcases a broad range of artifacts and paintings as well as period rooms fully preserved with the fancy furniture and decorations. Chairs worth more than your house probably.

Entrance hall. Really beautiful. To think there's probably hundreds of palaces and houses like this in Itay.

Gorgeous

One of my favorite parts of the museum: The 15th century messed up baby Jesus paintings

They are all pretty atrocious. In fact most religious art from the 15th to 17th century is low quality and uninspired. It's who had the money I guess.

There's hundreds of this and literally zero of these artists have ever seen an actual baby.

Out of nowhere, a Bruegel painting! The large "slice of medieval life" paintings are by far the most interesting in the museums

Section on ceramics which is a big industry around Venice.

Short library section as well with tons of 18th century books

A diploma. University used to be cool.

There's dozens of luxurious hand crafted items of all kinds for people who had more money than they knew what to do with

Example of a room in the villa/palace.

I've seen several of these ornate custom-made cabinets that have all sorts of mechanism and hidden compartments. They're awesome works of art and engineering

It's almost too much. Almost.

One thing that struck me is how well preserved and detailed the wallpapers were. How did they make these?

Casual trilobite fossil in some of the stair's marble.

Biblioteca Marciana

Just a few rooms near the archeological museum, centers mostly around book-making, books, maps and globes.

Entrance hall lavishly decorated like all the rest, with just a few cases talking about paper-making

Mainly how they made the inside covers for 17th century printed books. Oddly specific but beautiful craftsmanship

There's around 10 of these giant 16th century globes scattered around the 3 museums

They don't have Vancouver Island. Or a west coast. California was still depicted as an Island!

There's a whole room just for this map based on Marco Polo's stories. It has all sorts of annotations about every city/land they thought existed at the time

There's accounts from as far as New Zealand and South Africa with... possibly made up places and names. Look it up, very interesting artifact!

Archeological Museum

A pretty standard history museum showcasing a lot of roman, Greek and renaissance artifacts/sculptures as well as a small Egypt exhibition.

Oh my

Once more every inch of every room is decorated but the statues are well showcased and have room to breathe.

Those romans were up to no good

This is definitely not okay. This sculpture is going straight to jail.

Most of these were Roman copies of greek works, or even just copies of renaissance copies of Roman copies...

But they are my favourite things about these museums, they really nailed sculpture down millenia before painting, which is just odd to me.

A miniature clay sculpture used to sketch out the main marble work

Tons of busts of nobles, politicians and high ranking servicemen. All so perfectly rendered. Again think of those awful baby Jesuses painted 2000 years later!

Isn't this amazing? Perfect proportions and the person's flaws and characteristics were presented faithfully but beautifully in marble.

Also interesting is many of these are only roman-era heads later stuck on renaissance-era busts.

Lots and lots of sculptures of Gods as well, still they are depicted often as just mundane individuals

Of course unfortunate how many of these were broken/damaged throughout the ages.

Given the hundreds of thousands they probably crafted, it's really a shame so little of it exists to this day.

This museum has a few big globes as well

As well as a small library section full of 18th century books ( I think ). I looked some up on Ebay. Surprisingly affordable!

There's a nice section of artworks depicting Venice as it was in the 16th century.

Very large and extensive coin collection dating back to the Greeks and spanning all the way to the doges of Venice

One thing that's interesting is how small and thin the gold coins always were.

While many other types of coins ( like bronze ) were 1/4 inch thick.

Sections of beautiful books owned by certain nobles and church officials

Map of Venice from the 16th century, faithfully depicting every building in birds-eye-view. Remember there were no planes or drones back then. Quite a feat.

Love these ancient potteries. They have such a unique use of white, black and red color schemes. Maybe that's the only colors that didn't fade?

Egyptian sculpture

They have 2 mummies on display

Something I never noticed or saw: Paintings on the sarcophagus. Very well preserved coloring for something over 3000 years old.

Ceramic plate section with typical color schemes of the region. I've seen a ton of these now, they all looks weirdly the same.

The museums have tons of interesting and more mundane artifacts. Can you guess what these are?

They're for your quill ink! Isn't it interesting how creative and humorous they sometimes got with designs? You never suspect these people have any sense of humor from most of their art.

Gallerie Dell’Accademia Di Venice

This one isn’t part of the Museum Passes so you have to pay to get in. It’s a bit expensive and not totally worth it, but it houses a more extensive collections of artworks than the Doge’s Palace/Correr Museum.

Room looking almost barren compared to the other places!

You can regale yourself in gilded baby Jesuses depictions of all shapes and sizes

Sometimes you'll see one of these extremely ornate crosses in the museums

These are much more impressive than the Jesuses. Baby Jesuses really seemed like the "just pay a Mexican guy 20$ to fill this hole on the wall" of 16th century art.

The Gallery houses much larger and more impressive works. However it's interesting to see how large the brush strokes are and how little detail there is.

Also lots of odd-shaped paintings rescued from churches and cathedrals.

The main draw are all the Tintoretto paintings. You can see how much more detail an mastery was getting into the works in the 17th century and onward

4 panel Bosh painting! Again awesome to come across one of these in Italy

This proves I was near greatness

A second one! These are smaller than you'd imagine yet still packed with awesome details and goofiness.

The big attraction of this museum is DaVinci's "Vitruvian Man" original drawing. I can confirm that he knew how to draw

Also a few Durhers! His work really stands out compared to the rest of the gallery. Guy was good.

A few manuscripts. Shame you can only see 2 pages of these at once. Those books are so interesting.

Mechanical limbs for soldiers who lost arms/legs in combat and sued the king for compensation. Tons of articulations, you'd never guess this existed until centuries later.

They have a few sculptures scattered about as well. Huge lion.

Sometimes the frame/framing is more interesting and impressive than the paintings themselves.

90% of what's showcased as art is just Jesus stuff. Really put a damper on human creativity for centuries.

Natural History Museum

Lastly I visited the Natural History museum. If it has dinosaurs, I have to go. It’s relatively small and has basically nothing to do with Venice though. Maybe not the best use of your time if you are in Italy.

Opening of the museum has a few skeletons, mainly one of a giant prehistoric crocodile that's as long as a bus. Not pictured: That crocodile

Something you don't see often: Bugs preserved in amber

They have a pretty large section of very beautiful and detailed fossils in rocks. Some of the best I've seen.

Crocodile mummies alongside and actual mummy.

There's a big section on African artifacts

Including a huge room of trophies from the early 20th century

A very illegal room by today's standards

The man really went out of his way to shoot everything he could find

A gorilla! Just touching this would land you in jail now.

Look at him, he's so pleased with himself.

There's a huge collection of taxidermied animals from all of Europe

They have just about one of everything you could find near Italy and beyond

Even fake animals

Many organized in beautiful displays

I really mean it, they have every bird, mammal, amphibian, fish, reptile... Lot of these are getting old though

There's an anatomy / medical display section I'm sparring you most of the details of as well. Very interesting but gross.

Underwater section with actual and plastic animals of all kinds. Pretty relaxing.

20 meter long Fin Whale skeleton at the exit. Whale skeletons are always so amazing so see and pictures can't ever do them justice. Their size is incomprehensible.

That’s it for Venice. Now moving onto Bassano Del Grappa!

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Italy 2025 - Day Trip to Venice