Canal Grande Travel Guide

Known to the locals as the Canalazzo, the Canal Grande is Venice's high street, and divides the city in half, with three sestieri to the west and three to the east. Pending the construction of the much-discussed bridge to link the bus and train stations, only three bridges cross the waterway - at the station, Rialto and Accademia - but a number of gondola traghetti provide additional crossing points at regular intervals, as does the #1 vaporetto, which slaloms from one bank to the other along its entire length. The Canal Grande is almost four kilometres long and varies in width between thirty and seventy metres; it is, however, surprisingly shallow, at no point much exceeding five metres. In the fourteenth century an earthquake pulled the plug out and the entire contents drained away - for the best part of a fortnight Venice's finest waterway was an avenue of slime.

The section that follows is principally a guide to the Canal Grande palaces - the churches and other public buildings that you can see from the vaporetto are covered in the appropriate geographical sections. You'd need an amazing reading speed and a rubber neck to do justice to the Canal Grande in one run, though; even these edited highlights cover around fifty buildings (less than a third of the total). Try to allow for several trips, and don't miss the experience of a nocturnal boat ride - the romance of Venice at night survives even the din of a vaporetto