The 66 Best Places in Venice

The dining room at this two-Michelin-starred restaurant sits inside Palazzo Venart, its walls papered with imagery from the Silk Route, which sets an appropriately theatrical mood. The kitchen runs on tasting menus, with à la carte available, and the cooking leans into lagoon vegetables and aromatic herbs alongside confident work over the grill. Fine dining, dressed accordingly, with the Grand Canal close enough to feel smug about.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. 50 Top Italy #17 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Luxury

The Bellini was invented here, which tells you something about the kind of hotel this is. Perched on the tip of Giudecca Island, Cipriani is a Forbes Five Star property that holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels list, sitting across the lagoon from the city it lets you briefly escape. Murano glass, Fortuny fixtures, manicured gardens, and a heated saltwater pool fill the grounds, while suites in the Palazzo Vendramin annex come with a private butler.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. The 50 #72 · The World's 50 Best Hotels

The only hotel on the Grand Canal with a water-facing garden, Aman Venice is a Grand Canal palazzo where a count's family still occupies the top floor while guests take the rooms below. That arrangement sets the tone: it feels less like a hotel than a borrowed aristocratic home, very quiet, very beautiful, and priced accordingly. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels list.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. The 50 #79 · The World's 50 Best Hotels

A Gothic palazzo on the Grand Canal, the Gritti Palace has been hosting the conspicuously well-heeled since before the Renaissance, and it shows, in the best way. Antiques, hand-carved details, and 18th-century wooden lamps fill every corner of the restored interior. During Carnival or the Biennale, A-listers share the lobby without much fanfare. Forbes Four Star.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Arriving by gondola to a 17th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal sets the tone for this luxury hotel, where rooms were designed around the way Venetian light moves across water at different hours. The 169 rooms and suites run from canal-facing to garden-facing, with curlicue topiaries and roses below. Two bars and an Italian restaurant each open onto the outdoors, which in Venice is never a small thing.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Two centuries-old wood-paneled stuben inside a traditional mountain house set the scene for one of Friuli's quieter surprises. This is a Michelin-starred fine dining room where the chef reads the alpine pantry closely and without showing off, letting season and instinct steer the menu. The wine list is overseen by her daughter, who delivers by-the-glass picks verbally, which is either charmingly old-fashioned or a very good sign you should just ask.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The dining room sits above Piazza San Marco, which means the view is almost unfair. This Michelin-starred restaurant runs on ingredients from the lagoon, fish from the shallow waters, vegetables grown on Sant'Erasmo island, and shellfish when the season says so. The wine list reaches as far as volcanic whites from the Azores. The crowd is dressed for the occasion, and the occasion is Venice doing its most theatrical.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A walled medieval vineyard on the tiny island of Mazzorbo, reachable only by vaporetto and a short walk past a kitchen garden growing the local artichokes that end up on your plate. This Michelin-starred contemporary restaurant runs a no-choice tasting menu where the number of courses is yours to pick and the dishes arrive as a surprise, all fish and vegetables from the lagoon and Upper Adriatic, almost no meat.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A wisteria vine shades the canal-side terrace on a quiet lateral waterway in San Polo, which sets the mood before you've seen a menu. Inside, the kitchen runs seasonal tasting menus of six or eight courses, working through the Veneto's larder in a contemporary key. A Michelin star lives here, though the setting keeps things from feeling stiff. The dessert built around pumpkin, licorice, and almonds tends to linger in conversation on the walk back to the vaporetto.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Europe

Ceiling frescoes painted by students of Tiepolo set the tone for this canal-side luxury hotel a short walk from San Marco. The building was a convent once, and the bones show: stucco, silk-lined walls, antique furnishings, and marble bathrooms that feel lifted from a Doge's private quarters. Guests arrive by private water taxi, which is either romantic or expected at this price point, possibly both.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

Tiepolo frescoes still climb the grand staircase of this palazzo-turned-hotel on the Grand Canal, a short walk from the Rialto market. The Sagredo family filled the place with art when they owned it centuries ago, and most of it never left, so the corridors read more like a museum than a lobby. A boutique hotel and Italian national monument in the same building, which is either perfectly Venetian or just par for the course here.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A 37-room boutique hotel in a former aristocratic palazzo near the Rialto, Ai Reali pulls off something Venice rarely manages: it feels like staying in someone's well-appointed home rather than a converted monument. Antiques and odd little nooks throughout the building do most of the work. Marble baths and a surprisingly comprehensive spa handle the luxury-hotel part. San Marco is a short walk, which is either a selling point or a warning, depending on your relationship with crowds.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A former orphanage on the Riva degli Schiavoni, this boutique hotel has been so thoroughly colonized by the owning family's art and curiosity collections that every corridor feels like a cabinet of wonders. The Oriental tearoom occupies what was once a chapel. Rooms overlook the Grand Canal, and guests arriving by boat can slip in through a private water entrance, which is exactly as satisfying as it sounds.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

Fifty-two rooms on the Riva degli Schiavoni, which means your window competes directly with San Giorgio Maggiore for your attention. This boutique hotel leans into 19th-century Venice hard: brocade walls, Biedermeier furniture, tapestry-draped windows, and bathrooms lined in pink Carrara marble roomy enough to actually use. The neoclassical facade is the kind that makes other buildings on the waterfront quietly reconsider themselves.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A neo-Gothic palace on the Grand Canal where a Florentine architect stripped the usual Venetian overload down to clean lines and considered materials, making the simple feel sumptuous. It sits on Dorsoduro's museum mile, between the Guggenheim and the Accademia, so the neighborhood pulls its weight too. A hotel that reads more like a well-edited gallery than a period-room fantasy, which in Venice is a genuine act of restraint.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A handful of bar stools at a grey marble counter, and the rest of the room is tightly packed tables that belong to diners at mealtimes. Harry's is a cocktail bar that trades heavily on its history, and it earned every bit of it: this is where the Bellini was invented, and Hemingway was a regular. It's small, plain, and slightly intimidating to walk into, which somehow makes ordering one feel like an occasion.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Its own private island in the Venice lagoon, connected to the city by hotel boat, which already tells you what kind of trip this is. The JW Marriott Venice is a full resort spread across five distinct accommodation areas, from garden rooms in the main building to a two-bedroom villa with a private pool facing the water. A century-old olive grove shades one wing; the lagoon is never far from any of them. Pack accordingly.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A former monastery on its own private island, a short water taxi ride from the chaos of the Rialto, San Clemente Palace is the kind of resort that makes Venice feel like a secret you kept from yourself. The grounds run to gardens and a heated pool, the lagoon views arrive with every meal, and the spa leans into the monastic herbs with some self-awareness. The rooms carry the weight of the old stone walls without feeling like a history lesson.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

The restaurant sits beside a cinema-theatre on a quiet stretch of Mirano, and the fish on your plate came off the boat that morning. It's a casual, neighborhood seafood trattoria rooted in the Venetian lagoon tradition, the kind of place where the recipes haven't changed because there's no reason they should. The pannacotta with fresh strawberry sauce is a regular on the menu. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, and the wine-by-the-glass list is chosen to keep pace with the food.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A farmhouse dining room in the Mirano countryside where the menu runs on traditional Veneto cooking and the prices stay sensible enough that nobody winces. The feel is country house rather than restaurant, all warm rooms and staff who seem pleased to see you. A Michelin Bib Gourmand recognizes the kitchen's commitment to proper ingredients without the usual markup that tends to follow such attention.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Wood-paneled walls and a meat-heavy menu set Ai Gondolieri apart in a city where every other trattoria defaults to fish. Tucked just behind the Guggenheim in Dorsoduro, this rustic restaurant leans into traditional Venetian cooking: braised lamb, cured hams, sweet-and-sour vegetables, and a wine cellar stocked deep enough to keep you from ever looking at the cocktail list, though that's apparently substantial too.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked into one of San Polo's quieter backstreets, this old-school seafood trattoria has the kind of worn floors and familiar wall clutter that take decades to get right. The menu is Venetian and unapologetic about it, but the real action arrives verbally, when the server rattles off the day's specials with the confidence of someone who already knows what you should order. The wine list runs Italian and French, and leans generous on value.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A short walk from St. Mark's Square, this contemporary seafood restaurant leans into what the kitchen calls lagoon fusion, local Venetian catch dressed up with occasional detours through the Orient. The menu shifts with the season, following whatever the lagoon is actually giving up that week. The wine list runs deep, with some genuinely rare vintages tucked in among the usual suspects.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pizzeria in the Venetian mainland that seats 300 people and still runs multiple shifts on weekends, which tells you something. The chef is self-taught and built his reputation on high-hydration sourdough, with San Marzano tomatoes and fiordilatte from Agerola keeping the sourcing honest. The seafood pizzas are the move, built around Sicilian anchovies, Scardovari mussels, and octopus. It placed on 50 Top Pizza Italy.

1. 50 Top Pizza #91 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza #43 · 50 Top Pizza Italy

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tiny is barely the word: a handful of tables in a tucked-away Castello calle, and reservations that disappear weeks out. This snug seafood-forward osteria runs a menu shaped entirely by the market, with vegetables grown on Sant'Erasmo island through a collective kitchen-garden shared among small Venice restaurants. The cooking is rooted in the Venetian tradition, without fuss or flourish, which is exactly why the room is always full.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A table for two on a small terrace right at the canal is the opening argument here. This elegant trattoria in San Polo keeps its cooking rooted in Venice, which in season means fried moleche, the soft-shell crabs that appear briefly and disappear before you've planned a second trip. The wine cellar runs to around 800 labels, with a grappa and cognac selection that suggests nobody is in a hurry to leave.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A canal-side restaurant that looks every bit like a neighborhood bacaro, right down to the convivial hum, then serves something else entirely. The kitchen pulls from local markets and lagoon producers to put creative, modern plates on the table, not cicchetti. A few outdoor tables face a quiet canal if you time it right. The mood is relaxed and the service actually reads it, which in Venice, with tourists everywhere, is its own kind of achievement.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Neapolitan pizza a short walk from the Rialto, served in a room that opens onto a courtyard with a square beyond it, which is as good as Venice gets for lunch. The dough is long-leavened and pillowy, and the team leans into local produce, lagoon vegetables and Sant'Erasmo artichoke alongside the occasional mainland import. It draws a steady mix of Italians and visitors who found it without too much trouble from the train station.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Sitting on Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, this pizza restaurant opened recently with a specific idea: fold classic Venetian dishes into the pie. Risi e bisi, cuttlefish in their ink, tiny lagoon shrimp, all reimagined as toppings, which sounds like it shouldn't work until it does. Hundreds of wine bottles line the walls, the list is serious, and the staff actually knows it. A genuinely new concept for Venice, where new concepts are rare.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A pizzeria in the Venetian hinterland where the dough gets lighter every season and the seafood toppings are worth the detour from Venice proper. The beer list is taken as seriously as the pizza, which tells you something about the crowd. Dessert shows up at the end, which sounds obvious until it doesn't, and here it earns its place. A neighborhood spot that keeps quietly raising its own bar.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Tucked under the Procuratie Nuove arcades on Piazza San Marco, Caffè Florian has been around forever, and the gilded, frescoed rooms know it. It's a coffee and drinks bar where tourists come for the theater of the thing and locals duck in for a quick espresso at the counter, which costs considerably less than sitting down in the ornate dining rooms with the orchestra outside. Both options exist; just know which one you're paying for.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Bartenders in white tuxedos hand drinks to bellboys who carry them across one of the more theatrical lobby lounges in Venice, which is saying something. The Dandolo is a hotel bar in the Gothic palazzo next to the Doge's Palace, and the setting does most of the heavy lifting. Classic cocktails are reliably solid; the rest of the menu is less memorable. Come for the room, not the drinks list.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The terrace hangs right over the Grand Canal, which is either romantic or deeply unfair depending on your budget. This hotel bar inside the Gritti Palace does the Grand Venetian thing without apology: etched mirrors, red marble floors, white-tie bartenders working through a long menu of classics. The crowd leans tourist, but the setting is so extravagant that nobody seems to mind being exactly where a postcard told them to be.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The terrace hangs right over the Grand Canal, which is the whole argument for sitting here. This hotel bar at the Bauer does its job quietly, with black leather club chairs and scarlet walls they call the Red Room, though the interior is otherwise pretty modest by Venetian hotel-bar standards. Order something cold and watch the boats go by, which is exactly what everyone around you is doing.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Wine labels plaster the ceiling at this old-school Venetian wine bar tucked into a narrow alley near the Rialto, and the cellar below holds over a thousand bottles at prices that feel slightly illegal for Venice. Rough wooden benches, bare planks on the walls, and a glass counter piled with cicheti complete the picture. Locals have been doing exactly this, a glass and a small bite, here for generations.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A corner bacaro a short walk from San Marco, with shutters thrown open and barely a meter of corridor to stand in. The reason to know it is the hours: open until 1am most nights and 2am on Saturdays, long after Venice has gone to bed. Drinkers overflow onto the campo, voices carrying loudly enough to navigate by, which the neighbors have noted and the police occasionally confirm.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide