topics, or to watch my Italy Talk in its entirety, visit ricksteves.com, or

check out my Rick Steves YouTube channel. Enjoy.

Hi, I'm Rick Steves and I want to

share with you my take on one of the greatest cities you can visit anywhere

in Europe, and that is Venice, and when you think about Venice you also have to

think about the Veneto, that is the region around Venice, which has some

beautiful towns. So we're gonna look at Venice, we're gonna take a side trip to

Padova, Verona, and then a little bit out of the Veneto, towards the South, but an

obvious side trip from Venice, and that is called Ravenna.

Thanks for joining us, and we'll start with Venice. Now Venice is the best

preserved big city in Europe. It is just beautifully preserved in the middle of its

lagoon in northern Italy, and it's a town that goes way, way back. Remember,

Venice started out as a refugee camp, really. After the fall of Rome,

peace-loving people on the mainland were overrun by all the barbarians going back

and forth, having their little villages burned and trampled. Finally, they got

together and said, "this is going to be miserable but let's move out in the

lagoon, and hope the barbarians don't like water." So they abandoned their farms,

they literally deforested that part of Italy, to pound tree trunks into

the mud to support their little town, and they made a village, a fishing village

instead of a farming village, out in the lagoon, and gradually that morphed into a

trading center, and they were great traders, and when they reach their

pinnacle, they had a trading empire that stretched all the way to the Holy Land,

and they were the economic powerhouse in Europe. It was-their dollar was the

dollar. And when you go today, you'll find that the Venice of a thousand years ago

survives remarkably well. It was able to control a lot, not because only was a

great trader but it was also quite an impressive military power. Venice had

the first really mass-produced military sort of complex called the Arsenal. And

at the Arsenal, and you can see it today when you walk out there, it's a10 minute

walk from the main square, you'll find the place where they could mass-produce

their warships. in a very early form of mass production with an assembly

line, they could put together an entire warship in a couple of days, and

outfit it in one more day. The story is, whenever Venice had an adversary, a

potential military adversary, they'd invite him down, and they'd say,

"let's go to the arsenal and we'll show you how we make our ships." And they would build

the ship in, like, two days, and those potential adversaries would go home and

say, "let's just not mess with Venice". I mean it is such a powerhouse. When you look at

Venice today it's the shape of a fish, and it's perfectly preserved. There's a

law that prohibits anybody from changing any of these buildings, I believe there's a

couple of modern buildings in the town, the only one you're likely to see is the

train station. When you look at that fish-shaped island, you can see, if it is a fish,

the great intestine would be the Grand Canal, right. And up until a century

ago it was an island, but then it was connected with the causeway. The causeway

goes to the mainland and it brings the highway and several train lines, so

you've got Venice now connected with the rest of Italy, and the rest of Europe. You

got a big train station, and you got a big parking lot right there near the

mouth of that fish. From there you get on your boat, and you wind through the great

intestine and you dump out at Piazza San Marco. That's where the Doge's Palace

would be, and that's where Basilica San Marco is. The trick for us is to break

out of that middle zone between the train station and Piazza San Marco, and

explore to the far reaches, and that's where you find the magic Venice without

all the crowds. Here you see a schematic diagram of the city with the different

neighborhoods and I'll remind you, you got the train station. It takes about an

hour to walk from the train station across town to St. Mark's, where the

political and religious center is. It's a delightful walk, halfway between is the

Rialto Bridge. And between the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark's, that is the main

shopping thoroughfare. And most of the tourists spend most of their time just

in a shopping trance,

walking back and forth with all the other tourists, with all the fancy

displays, just marveling at the crowds and the high prices. It doesn't occur to them

to get out and walk to the tail of the fish, or walk to far reaches of that

beautiful island. This is where the Grand Canal dumps out, and this is the end of

the Grand Canal, looking right from the top of the bell tower. This is where you

arrive, in Venice this is the train station, and that's the building from

Mussolini's time, that's a fascist architecture. In front of the train

station you'll find the boat dock. That's called a vaporetto. You get around Venice

by boat. They don't have city buses because there's no cars or buses. And

what you do is think of the boat, the vaporetto as a floating city bus. It has

numbers, it has stops, and the only difference is, if you get off between

stops you can drown. you hop on the boat, and you wind your way down the Grand Canal, under

the Rialto Bridge, all the way to St. Mark's Square. And this is it, just a

parade of beautiful palaces, and mansions, and merchant's villas. I've worked for

thirty years to take groups around Venice, I love tour guiding in Venice, and

we've created an app that has guided walks through the very most important stops

in Italy and the rest of Europe. it's Rick Steves Audio Europe, it's absolutely

free, and I want to really stress it here, because when you go to Venice, you're

gonna want a guide. And you can hire a guide, it's quite expensive, you can read a book,

or if you have a mobile device, simply download Rick Steves Audio Europe, and you

go to "tick tick tick," whatever you want to pick, on your computer, you can listen to it

on your mobile device, you can listen to it offline. Stick me in your ear, get

on that slow boat on the train station, and I narrate every little way-all the

way across town to the Doge's Palace. It's a lot of fun, and it works really,

really good. The main square, St. Mark's Square, it's the only place that gets to

be called a square in the town. It's facing the Basilica San Marco and the

bell tower, the "campanile." This is one of the greatest pieces of real estate in

Europe. This is a romantic painting from a couple centuries ago, but if you stood

in the same spot and looked at it today,

it hasn't changed very much. And it's got the same kind of romance, there's

something about it that I never get tired of. When you're in Venice you want

to get caught up in the romantic of Venice, you want to be on that square in the

evening when the dueling orchestras are playing. You hear people complain

about "oh it's $25 for a glass of wine or a beer at the famous café on the St. Mark's

Square." Well no, its not $25 for a beer, it's $25 for a table at the most expensive

piece of real estate in Europe, listening to live orchestra, surrounded by the

wonders of Venice, and it comes with a drink. Come on, don't complain. If you want a

beer, go four blocks away and step up to the bar and get a beer for the same

price as anywhere else, you know, but this is one of the great experiences of

Europe. Here you are, looking at Basilica San Marco, wow. Now I want to remind you,

Venice started out, as I mentioned, as a refugee camp. It was really important,

ultimately, politically and religiously, or politically and economically, but of

no great important religiously because they didn't go back to biblical times, it

was a relative upstart town, and they had no bones. You had to have relics to be

important in those days, and Venice had all sorts of money, all sorts of power, but an

inferiority complex when it came to religious importance. Now I don't know

exactly how they knew the stuff but I think there was, like, newsletters going

around or, something but the bones of St. Mark were available in Egypt. St. Mark's

bones. Venice sent a crew down to Egypt to, what they call, "rescue the bones

of St. Mark," from the Muslims, you know, and they brought it back to Christendom. And

they planted Mark under the altar of St. Mark's Basilica, and

suddenly, St. Peter and the Dragon are out, and St. Mark and Winged Lion are in, and Venice is

now on the pilgrimage trail, and it's a complete town. Here we have a thousand

year old mosaic telling the story under the door of st. Mark's Basilica,

and if you look closely, you can see Mark on that great day, being brought in after

that voyage across the Mediterranean from Egypt, and finding his ultimate

resting spot there in Venice, under the altar of St. Mark's Basilica. And it is a

gilded, lavish

rich, thousand year old treasure chest today.

Well worth checking out, you gotta check out the interior of Venice, St. Mark's. And

all over Venice, in fact, all over Venice's Empire, you will find lions with wings,

'cause that was the symbol of St. Mark, St. Mark's Winged Lion. This is the

political and religious center of Venice right here, you can see the Doge's Palace,

that was, you know, the political powerhouse, the Capitol building, and

you've got the bell tower which you can still climb to this day, and behind that

you've got St. Mark's Basilica. When we look at it today, it's the same thing.

Venice is remarkably well preserved. Now this Doge's Palace is worth touring,

and when you go inside you'll find lavish rooms, and you'll find all sorts

of history, and when you go out back you've got the Bridge of Sighs which you can

walk over in order to get to the old prison, just like Casanova did. And all

those other people who, according to legend, would be sentenced in the Doge's

Palace, take one last look at their beautiful, beloved Venice, sigh, and then

rot in those prison cells with all the rats and everything, on the other side of

the canal. Venice has so many gorgeous corners, and it's so fun for us to check

it out, but I wanna remind you, it's human nature for all of us tourists to stay right

where all the people, and the glitter, and the glass, and the trinkets, and the

glasses, okay. Break away from that. Break away from that, because Venice is much

more than tacky tourist shops, Venice is a chance to get out and explore a

town of 70,000 people. Venice is a small town today, that entertains 10 or 12

million people a year. But the core town is a parallel existence. The local people

know their Venice, and they've got kind of blinders, and they can almost live

oblivious to the crush of tourists that come and go every day. If you're up early,

if you're out late, if you're in the far fringes of that island community, you do

feel the pulse of the community of Venice. One great thing about Venice is,

wonderful art. If you think about art in Europe, remember you gotta have money to

have art.

In southern Italy, there was not a lot of money, and there's not a lot of art

today. The money was in Venice, the money was in Florence, and that's where your art

is five hundred years later. I like art in situ, rather than in museums. In situ,

where was originally commissioned to be, and Venice has one of the greatest

examples of in situ art, and that is the Church of the Frari, the Church of the

Brothers. This is the exterior, not a very impressive exterior, but if you step

inside, you got masterpieces by Giorgione, by Titian, and by a handful of other great

masters of the Venetian Renaissance. To see one great painting in situ by a

great master, to me, is just a delight. To go to a church where you have eight

paintings, by eight different masters, all where they're originally intended to be, is

flat-out amazing. I like it so much that one of the actual tours on the Rick Steves

Audio Europe list is of the Frari, just so I could walk you through that and

appreciate that. If you like Venetian art, remember there is a gallery, it's

sort of like the Uffizi, or like the Vatican, and in Venice it's called the Accademia.

And there you've got a, just a whole lot of very sumptuous Venetian art. The

Renaissance started in Florence. It was brought down to Rome by the Pope. In 1521 when

Raphael died, the Renaissance carries on in Venice, funded by the rich merchant

class. In Venice it became the art of wealthy people. And it was art that made

wealthy people feel good about their wealth. You can imagine, if somebody's

filthy rich, they want to have an artist that makes them feel cultured, and

high-class, not crass and materialistic, and I think you get that kind of agenda

in the art of Venice. A key for me, as a tour guide, when I have a group in Venice,

is to get my people walking. Now, a lot of Americans are nervous about getting lost

in Venice. Don't worry about getting lost in Venice, you're gonna get lost in

Venice, alright, there's almost no street names, you don't know where the heck-

what street you're on or anything like that.

Wander to your heart's content, and remind yourself, "I'm on an island

and I cant get off without knowing it," okay. You're on the island of Venice, it's not that

big, and you just can't get

irrevocably lost. One very nice trick is, any business, any little hotel, any

restaurant, and they are everywhere, has a card, and on the back of that card is a

map that says, "you are here." Anywhere you go in Venice, they love to give up

their cards, you know that. Pick that up, and that's where you are and they want to

help you get to that restaurant, but it's also gonna help you get the heck out of

that restaurant, and it shows you where the big landmarks are nearby, so you got

that sort of, "I am here"

aid. Also remember, when you're walking around, and I used to do this to my groups,

I'd walk all over, my groups would think we're hopelessly lost, and I would actually

know where we are, because I would just look above the crowds. If you look above

the crowds, you see signs pointing to the nearest landmark. You navigate by

landmarks. In this case, you can get to st. Mark's by going left or right. I love

to wander to the edge of Venice. Look at this, there's no tourist in sight, it's just a

pastel wonderland, and this is all yours any day of the year, even in the most

crowded day of the year, you could come to this spot and see no tourists.

Beautiful, pastel, sleepy, dreamy, romantic Venice. If you can get a guided

tour of Venice it's a great idea. On the ships, on the boat, on the back lanes, there's lots

of good guides in Venice, there's good books, and of course we cover that in our

app. This is the Bridge of Sighs, and to go under the Bridge of Sighs in a gondola

with your favorite travel partner is a beautiful thing. Remember, when you go to