Places to see in Venice

Five centuries of Venetian painting — Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese — in the city that produced them, which is a different experience from meeting them scattered through other countries' museums. Big but not overwhelming, and never as crowded as it deserves. Two hours.

The seat of the Venetian republic for a thousand years — state rooms, the largest oil painting in the world, and the route across the Bridge of Sighs into the old prisons. More rewarding than the basilica for anyone who wants to understand how Venice actually worked. Two hours, and the Secret Itineraries tour is worth booking if you want the small rooms.

Open on Piazza San Marco since 1720, which makes it the oldest café in Italy still trading. Sitting outside with the orchestra costs what it costs; the point is that it has been doing this for three hundred years.

Byzantine rather than Italian in feel, and the interior is eight thousand square metres of gold mosaic — go on a bright day, when the light through the upper windows sets the whole ceiling alight. Short free visits, paid skip-the-line slots, and separate tickets for the Pala d'Oro and the loggia with the bronze horses. Large bags are refused at the door.

A huge brick Gothic church in San Polo holding Titian's Assumption above the high altar — painted for this building, still in it, and worth the crossing on its own. Also Titian's tomb, and a Bellini triptych in the sacristy. Calm, and a useful anchor for a walk away from San Marco.

Where the Bellini and carpaccio were both invented, open since 1931 and declared a national landmark. A small, plain, expensive room near San Marco — go for one drink at the bar rather than dinner.

The city's fish and produce market, working since the eleventh century and still supplying the restaurants around it. Mornings only, closed Sundays and Mondays for fish. Go early with a coffee — it is the one place in central Venice that is unambiguously for the people who live there.

The domed church at the mouth of the Grand Canal, built as a thank-offering after the plague of 1630, and the shape that closes every photograph taken from the Accademia bridge. Free to enter, rarely busy, with Titians in the sacristy. Ten minutes by vaporetto or a walk through Dorsoduro.

The only piazza in Venice — everything else is a campo — and the lowest point in the city, which is why it floods first. Ringed by cafés with orchestras and prices to match. Best at seven in the morning before the day boats arrive, and after ten at night when they have gone.

The oldest bridge over the Grand Canal, and the busiest place in Venice at midday. The view along the canal from the top is the reason to push through. The market on the far side, in the morning, is the better half of the visit — fish, vegetables and locals actually shopping.

The enclosed white bridge between the Doge's Palace and the prisons, seen from the waterfront bridge beside it, where a permanent scrum of people photograph it. Five minutes from outside; the inside is part of the palace visit, and the view out through its stone lattice is deliberately almost nothing.