Italy - Venice and Veneto

Venetian cuisine, as one would expect, is quite superb: a host of delicious snacks, panini e tramezzini; wonderful fish, squid, eels, and shellfish – fresh from the lagoon and served in the traditional Venetian manner; wild game from Veneto lakes; soups like the famous oyster creation zuppa di cozze e vongole; bigole, a typical home-made Venetian pasta; special polenta based on the flour from Veneto; quite extraordinary salads with young leaves like the radicchio di Treviso rosso precoce; incomparable sweets and cakes like pandoro; all savoured with classical Italian wines or pleasant Veneto wines like Valpolicella and Amarone reds and, for whites, Soave and Prosecco.

For clients wanting to savour very good Venetian cuisine outside the home, we offer offer a complete list of the best restaurants and cafés in each of the better sestieri.

Venice is still very much of a party city and its renowned Festivals take place throughout the year: the Carnival in February; the Fiesta del Redontore in July celebrating the deliverance from the plague in 1526, with a pontoon of boats, fireworks, and picnics on the water; Venice Film Festival in August-September – among the world's leading film festivals; and the Historic Regatta in September that has a procession of ancient vessels along the Grand Canal.

Venice is then – in principle – an all-season venue, but in practice, we advise our clients to avoid July and August when the temperatures are way too high, the canals are quite odorous, and the city is spoiled by too many visitors.