Venice Walking Tour with Grand Canal Water Taxi and St. Mark’s Basilica Guided Tour
Address
Calle larga de l'Ascension, 30124 Venezia VE, Italy
GPS
45.4337517, 12.3369533
Venice Walking Tour with Grand Canal Water Taxi and St. Mark’s Basilica Guided Tour. What to do in Venice? Do it all on our small group walking tour, plus a Grand Canal water taxi ride, and St. Mark’s Basilica skip the line access.
Highlights
- Skip-the-Line access to St. Mark’s Basilica
- Guided tour of the basilica and terraces
- Walking tour of Venice
- See Marco Polo’s house
- See Campo SS Giovani and Bridge of Sighs
- One-hour water taxi on Grand Canal
- Rialto Bridge
Venice Walking Tour + Grand Canal Water Taxi + St. Mark’s Basilica Guided Tour
See all of Venice’s top attractions with this exclusive, semi-private tour, restricted to 10 or less individuals per group. With a comment customized to fit your group by an expert English-speaking guide, in just a few hours you will learn more about Venice than many tourists do on a whole journey. Your guide will have more time to answer questions with such tiny group sizes and adjust the speed of the trip to fit you.
First, we’re going to head directly to the primary attraction to make sure you’ve got plenty of time to get everything in. With relics and memorials purchased (or stolen) from all over Europe and Asia, St. Mark’s Basilica took 800 years to construct. Even the remains of St. Mark finally ended up here (though by questionable means) when they were stolen from Egypt by Crusaders.
There may be lengthy queues here but no worries, we’ve got Skip the Line Access! Your guide will bring you for an expanded trip into this cavernous room, pointing out mosaics dating back to the 11th century and lovely works of art.
Then it’s up to the second floor in this busy basilica for some stolen moment. The St. Mark’s Basilica’s terraces are worth a visit on their own, not to mention the incredible views they offer on the busy Piazza San Marco below.
After our tour of St. Mark’s Basilica and St. Mark’s Square, we will walk past some of Venice’s best-known sights along with some unlikely favourites. We spent many hours traveling through the town, attempting to find the correct equilibrium between significant monuments and scenic corners and discovering that much of the pleasure of visiting Venice is on the trip, wandering through quiet residential streets and canals from one place to another.
Our Venice walking tour will take you on such a journey-visiting Marco Polo’s house to hear about the Venetian son who went to sea one day and came back with Chinese stories; Campo SS Giovanni Paolo with its many-age combination of architecture; and the renowned Bridge of Sighs.
As you move from one place to another, your guide will entertain you with Venice stories, from informative tales of how the town has remained afloat for so long, to the scandal whispers that make Venice such a captivating town. They will also highlight characteristics and structures you may have never noticed on your own.
A visit to the Rialto Bridge, an amazing marble structure that cost Venice a tiny fortune to construct but definitely worth every penny, is a highlight of this trip, and here finishes our walking portion. Now it’s time for the water taxi to take a seat and appreciate the city’s beauty. Our tour remains on the Grand Canal, the primary waterway of the city that snakes past no fewer than 50 palaces, six churches, four bridges and two open-air markets. For a tour of all these fantastic sights, we will bring you to the water, which your guide will point out and clarify as you pass.
While many tourists choose to travel the Grand Canal by gondola, this broad and hectic waterway is much better adapted to the water taxis we use, allowing us to move rapidly and easily along the canal without losing a smaller vessel’s intimacy.
At the renowned Rialto Bridge, your trip will end. And there you have it-you’ve seen the very best of Venice from three completely distinct angles in just a few hours-water, land and even air from St. Mark’s Basilica’s terraces. And everything without waiting in line or jostling to see in a large group of tourists!
