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Few cities in the world demand as much of the imagination before you arrive as Venice does, and fewer still manage to exceed what you pictured once you are actually standing in it. Built across more than a hundred small islands in a shallow lagoon at the northern end of the Adriatic, the city has no roads in the conventional sense: the canals are the streets, the vaporetti are the buses, and the rhythm of daily life is set by tides rather than traffic lights. That physical reality shapes everything about how Venice feels, from the particular quality of light reflected off water onto stone facades to the way sound carries differently here than in any other European city.

The sestiere of San Marco draws most first-time visitors, and reasonably so. The Basilica di San Marco, with its Byzantine domes and golden mosaics accumulated over nearly a thousand years, and the adjacent Doge's Palace, seat of the Venetian Republic for centuries, together form one of the most architecturally layered civic spaces in Europe. A guided tour that includes access to the Pala d'Oro, the jewelled altarpiece kept behind the high altar, rewards the effort considerably more than a self-guided wander through the crowds. Across the Piazzetta, the lagoon opens up toward the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and the view from that waterfront has been painted so many times it has become almost abstract, a symbol rather than a place, until you stand in front of it.