There are so so many travel guides to Venice. What I usually do is get 1 basic guide and several that are more unusual. I almost always buy them used.
Since I love my walkabouts in foreign cities, I was over the moon when I saw On Foot Guides had a walking book of Venice. I’ve used this series before and they are excellent.
Venice For Pleasure has been around for over 40 years. Some say it’s THE BEST guide on Venice ever written. It’s definitely my kind of book. Jammed full of quirky details. A real pleasure!
mmmmmmm…I will be quoting this one liberally throughout my travel journal. It’s a series of essays. Enchanting meditations on Venice.
“I felt I’d stepped into my own self-portrait in the cold air… The backdrop was all in dark silhouettes of church cupolas and rooftops; a bridge arching over a body of water’s black curve, both ends of which were clipped off by infinity.”
I haven’t really dug into this one yet. But it arrived on the very day that Gore Vidal died so I take that as a good omen.
Will I read every page in every book before I go? Of course not. But these are the kinds of books I return to again and again and will become a part of my permanent travel library. I’ll probably take only 1 with me. Which one, has yet to be determined.
If you have a favorite please leave it in the comments so this post becomes a resource of unputdownable Venice treasures. Guides, essays, history, novels. Let’s keep them all in this section.
And there is always Baedeker’s! He must have a Guide to Venice yes? I remember having an old trusty blue Baedeker’s guide when I went to Greece around 40 years ago. Had everything in it! But I don’t think they are blue anymore. Sort of like how the Michelin green guides do now. So that would be another I might recommend. Probably both available somewhere from Amazon…
James/Jan Morris wrote an excellent and very poetic guide many years ago, which I believe was updated fairly recently – well worth reading.
I was lent a copy of The Companion Guide to Venice by Hugh Honour many years ago and immediately bought my own second-hand beat up hardback copy, and now I never visit Venice without it. It was written in 1965, so the hotel and restaurants are all long gone apart from the Danieli and the Gritti but it is an inspiring book and describes the wonderful architecture in a way that makes you want to sit on a vaporetto and go up and down the Grand Canal all day just checking out the different palace facades and window designs from Byzantium, to Gothic to Renaissance and so on. My other recommendation is by another wonderful British writer John Julius Norwich who has written the definitive History of Venice, a worthy tome but probably goes into more detail than you need. Instead check out Paradise of Cities – Venice and its 19th Century Visitors. It starts with Napoleon and includes Byron, Henry James, Singer Sargent and many others, all of whom spent time in the city and most of whom could not bear to leave it. Not a book but very helpful none the less is the website churchesofvenice.co.uk – a non religious guide to the art and architecture of the more obscure Venetian churches with a description of what makes them worth visiting, includes a map and photos too.
Geoff Dyer wrote a novel — or, really, two somewhat-linked novellas, called Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. I loved both of them, and the Venice one has lots of atmospheric stuff (and a couple of very steamy sex scenes, if anyone minds that). And it’s very clever. And the Varanasi (Banares) part is good too, in a very different way…
Mary Ann, If you want a charming novel for the plane trip one of Donna Leon’s. She writes about a quirky detective in Venice. Brings the sites you’ll see alive. I read the one about La Fenice on my last trip over. The inspector is endearing.
Two more for the list:
The Passion- Jeanette Winterson (all time favourite)
Serinissima- Erica Jong
Mary Ann, I am dreamily swimming through Watermark. Margins full of my scribbled notes. Has plunged me back into working on the novel, so a big thanks!
I just found a little book in the library called “Spirit of Place: Venice.”