Venice

Venice is a fish drawn on a lagoon, with a reversed S of water for a spine. A hundred and eighteen islets, four hundred bridges, no cars, no bicycles, and a thousand years of a republic that ruled the sea from a square it called the drawing room of Europe: the basilica gilded with what its merchants brought home from Byzantium, the pink palace of the doges, the campanile that fell in 1902 and was rebuilt exactly, 'as it was, where it was'. Around the fish, the lagoon: Murano and its furnaces, Burano and its painted houses, the Lido holding back the Adriatic, and the mainland at the far end of a bridge that the city pretends is not there.

The traveller arrives by water if it can be arranged and takes the number one vaporetto the slow length of the Grand Canal at least once, standing at the bow; sees San Marco at seven in the morning, before the day-trippers land; crosses the Rialto and eats standing at the bacari behind it, cicchetti and an ombra of wine; gets lost in Cannaregio and finds the Ghetto, the first in the world to bear the name; takes the traghetto across the canal for two euros, standing, like a Venetian; and gives the Accademia, the Frari and one island a whole afternoon each. The evening belongs to the campo, any campo, with the children playing and the bells arguing.

The Guide's honesty: Venice is loved almost to death — the city charges day visitors an entry fee on peak days now, the big ships have been pushed out of the basin, and the population that actually lives on the fish has fallen below fifty thousand — so sleep on the island, spend where Venetians spend, and walk gently; a gondola costs what it costs (about ninety euros for thirty minutes, more after seven), and the traghetto is the honest man's gondola; the acqua alta of autumn is a mood, not a disaster — the city puts out walkways and carries on; and the address system is designed to lose you. Let it. Being lost in Venice is the whole itinerary.