VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 02: Tourists crowd the area near the Rialto Bridge on August 02, 2023 in Venice, Italy. UNESCO officials have included Venice and its lagoon to the list of world heritage in danger to review, along with Ukraine’s Kyiv, and Lviv. The UN cultural agency deems Italy not effective in protecting Venice from mass tourism and extreme weather conditions. (Photo by Stefano Mazzola/Getty Images)
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As is sadly the case in all of Italy’s major tourist cities, Venice has become little more than a pen of huddled steers pushing through narrow streets and across small bridges. Because of its size and cramped lay-out the crush of tourists in Venice is worst of all, not least because of the disgorging of thousands of passengers from cruise ships that dwarf the landscape. They come for a day, look at the Piazza San Marco, have a pizzas, buy a trinket and disembark by four P.M.. leaving behind restaurateurs and souvenir shop owners with bulging pockets while the local Venetians retreat behind their apartment shutters. The city’s nickname, “La Serenissima,” hardly applies any more.
VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 17: A Vaporetto passes a Gondolier and their Gondola on the canal’s of Venice, on August 17, 2022, in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Steve Christo/Corbis via Getty Images)
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Prices are hiked up for tourists, the museums jammed, the vaporettos and gondolas vie for space on the canals. Why, then, go through the miasma that has changed the entire character of the city?
The Piazza San Marco by high water. Private Collection. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
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The answer is, you don’t. Anyone traveling to Venice from March through December is just asking to be crushed against a wall or forced to wait in line for hours to go through the Basilica of St. Mark’s. The only time to go to Venice with any hope of a pleasant and relaxed visit is in winter, when the waves of tourists have receded and the cruise ships are down in warmer climes.
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TOPSHOT – This picture taken from a window of a Vaporetto boat-taxi shows Ponte di Rialto (Rialto bridge) (background) covered with snow on March 10, 2010. The weather worsen in Italy on Wednesday after snowfall surprised the centre and north of the country the day before. AFP PHOTO / Marco Sabadin (Photo by Marco Sabadin / AFP) (Photo by MARCO SABADIN/AFP via Getty Images)
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Venice in winter can be gloomy, cloudy and rainy, even snowy, and you never know when the Grand Canal will overflow into the streets. The Lagoon actually froze over in 2012. January and February are, however, the months when hotel rates drop, restaurants are more welcoming and less pricey, and the ability to wend your way through the myriad neighborhood streets is easy and revelatory of Venice’s true character. And if you’ve already seen Venice in the hot, humid summer, winter is a very different kind of experience.
A view taken on July 29, 2023 shows people shopping at the Rialto fish market in Venice. Unesco is recommending that Venice be placed on the list of World Heritage in Danger, as “insufficient” measures have been taken to fight the deterioration of the site due in particular to mass tourism and climate change, according to a decision made public on July 31, 2023. UNESCO, the UN’s cultural wing, put Venice on its heritage list in 1987 as an “extraordinary architectural masterpiece”, but the body has warned of the need for a “more sustainable tourism management”. (Photo by MARCO SABADIN / AFP) (Photo by MARCO SABADIN/AFP via Getty Images)
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The city’s markets will be open, teeming with purple red radicchio and green-gold olive oil, racks of local cheeses like montasio and asiago, ravioli colored with beets, basil, saffron, even chocolate, pungent white and black truffles, purple eggplants, green artichokes, rosy pomegranates, ring-shaped butter cookies called bussolai, and myriad forms of marzipan fruit in pretty pink paper boxes. The city’s wine shops are stacked with the region’s best Soave, Valpolicella, Bardolino, and sparkling Prosecco.
At the covered seafood market near the Rialto the stalls are stocked with signs reading nostrano, which means “ours,” fish brought in from local waters––inch-long shrimp called schile; gray-black eels called lamprede; dogfish called gattuccio; red mullet called triglie, and John Dory, called San Pietro; and the cuttlefish called seppie, whose flesh and ink go into the sauce of one of Venice’s most famous dishes—risotto con seppie.
A dish of black Venere risotto with cuttlefish ink and boiled cuttlefish. (Photo by: Paolo Picciotto/REDA/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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Every trattoria and restaurant in Venice specializes in seafood that comes from these markets and is therefore impeccably fresh. One of the most treasured is hidden away from the tourist center, Corte Sconta (Calle del Pestrin 3886; 041-522-7024) in the Castello neighborhood. They bring you food till you say “Basta!” and the plates will be full of tiny shrimp (gamberetti), fried anchovies, calamari, and mussels, followed by two spaghetti dishes, ending off with four kinds of grilled fish, all of it accompanied by Corte Sconta’s Prosecco house wine.
My favorite local restaurant in Venice, just across the Rialto, is Alla Madonna (Calle della Madonna 594; 522-3824) , with several rooms (the summer tourists get the one to the right as you enter, the more pleasant dining room for locals and regulars a few feet away.) The staff brings you spaghetti tossed with sweet little vongole clams suffused with garlic. There is a wide variety of sea bass, San Pietro and sole.
People enjoy a drink at cafe Florian in Venice on June 03, 2021. (Photo by ANDREA PATTARO / AFP) (Photo by ANDREA PATTARO/AFP via Getty Images)
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In the afternoon a Venetian stops for an ombra (“shadow”)––a glass of wine, a little gelato, a slice of dish of tiramisù taken in the shade cast by the bell tower and cathedral at San Marco. Sit inside or under the arch of Florian, here since 1720 and host to everyone from Verdi and Rossini to Callas and Pavarotti; or Quadri, founded in 1775. Watch the David Lean movie “Summertime” wherein spinster Katharine Hepburn meets lothario Rossano Brazzi at one of these cafés.
Before dinner a Venetian may go to a wine bar for a sandwich snack called a piadino, at a spot like Vino Vino in San Marco, Vini da Pinto in San Polo, or Capitan Uncino in Santa Croce. Requisite is a stop for a bellini at Harry’s Bar—Hemingway’s favorite bar.
In my next installment I’ll go upscale with some restaurants that set a high standard of cucina alla veneto.
Dining and Cooking