Overview
The palaces face the water because the water was the front door: goods came in at the ground floor, the family lived above it, and the facade was the family’s public argument for its own standing. Reading them in order is a course in Venetian architecture, from Veneto-Byzantine arcades through the Gothic of the Ca’ d’Oro to Baroque and neoclassical. Between the bridges, seven traghetti — standing gondola ferries — still cross for a couple of euros.
Highlights
Take vaporetto line 1 from Piazzale Roma to San Marco at the front of the boat; it stops everywhere and is the cheapest tour in Italy. Do it again after dark, when the palace interiors are lit and visible from the water. The traghetto crossing at Santa Sofia is thirty seconds of standing in a gondola and the cheapest one you will ever take.